


(A little good) Don’t stop the devil

by DarkShadeless



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: A+ Parenting, Alternate Universe, Gen, Magical Realism, Murder, Soul trafficking, Xerender I fucking swear, i just want to talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Early in Malavai’s career he… makes a mistake. Strictly speaking it isn’t even fully his mistake to make but that hardly matters in the end. It will haunt his steps, in every sense of the word and there is little he can do about it.(But would he, if he could?)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercuryPilgrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPilgrim/gifts).



> Set in MercuryPilgrim’s Modern Magic AU (Cloudbank - Chapter 21)  
> What can I say, I got inspired. I absolutely adore the style of the world you've built and tried to keep it consistent. I hope I managed to do it justice!  
> Yon’s theme in this verse is this song: Dead Posey – Don’t Stop the Devil ( ;) )

Malavai is about to make himself a cappuccino when his cell phone rings. The mellow tone pierces the peace and quiet of his cramped apartment like the stylish equivalent to a death knell.

He closes his eyes helplessly. So much for his evening off.

His fingers toy with the unlock screen before he has fully decided to pick up, not that he won’t, but the number on the caller ID makes the decision for him. Malavai swipes it with a frown. “Jaesa? Hello.”

# _Malavai! Thank goodness I caught you._ #

His frown deepens. Jaesa sounds… strange. Stressed? He likes to think they know each other well enough for him to spot her moods and there are few people he would say that about. The uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach grows. “Is everything alright?”

She laughs but the tension doesn’t fade from her voice. # _Sure! Of course._ # A beat of silence. At the other end of the line something rustles, as if she is dragging a hand through her hair. # _... no, not really. Malavai, can I ask for a favour?_ #

That open ended request alone, in their line of work, is mildly alarming to say the least. “What kind of favour?”

# _An intervention just came in and I can’t make it. Could you go?_ #

No haggling, no playful jockeying, no nothing. Whatever has Jaesa out of sorts has well and truly gotten to her.

It’s a good thing he hasn’t gotten to get out of his work clothes yet.

* * *

Malavai is not the first to arrive at the scene, so to speak. It does not appear as if they’ve quite reached that point but by the bare bones of information Jaesa’s case file provided him with it might not be far off.

People never cease to amaze him with their capacity for absolute _idiocy_.

“I’m not waiting another moment. Timing is crucial!” echoes through the half-opened door he has been pointed towards by a secretary with a smile so fixed she has to at least have an inkling what is going on. What is holding her at her post Malavai can’t say. With the kind of contract involved the whole building might go under when things inevitably go wrong.

The document had to be sent his way by emergency courier in an actual, physical copy drafted by hand. The magics woven into the bindings had refused any other form of duplication. Reportedly, the second attempt at photocopying it had left a trainee breaking out into bloody tears. When his slapdash translation was handed off to Malavai, the ink was already burning itself out of existence to escape the form it had been forced to take.

To say he is not looking forward to this meeting is an understatement.

“Xerender, I would really recommend you slow down and think this through,” an even voice says just before Malavai can set a foot into the room but in that instant he already knows what he will find. Can this day get any better?

“Please listen to me,” says the woman whose name and face is on the building, just as Malavai finally makes his entrance. “No good will come from haste.”

Satele Shan is poised, even in a situation this fraught with tension.

It’s not enough. Mr. Whitmore, subject of the troublesome situation Malavai has been called in to be consulted about, slams his hands onto her table, eyes wild. “I’m not going to have some two-bit lawyer ruin this for me, Satele!”

Two-bit lawyer. Malavai has half a mind to turn around and leave.

He wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in his profession if he let rude clients get to him, though. As things stand, Mr. Whitmore isn’t even his client. No, Miss Shan is. That in itself is a peculiar situation. Miss Shan and her contemporaries are not known for their ready employment of metaphysically binding magical contracts. Quite the contrary.

But it seems one of her own has stepped out of line.

Malavai clears his throat. Miss Shan’s eyes flick to him and he is treated to the peculiar sight of someone suppressing an emotion so completely he can’t tell what the shiver of expression would have been that would have crossed her face. “Ah. Mr. Quinn, I presume.”

Her tone is cool, cooler than would be polite, but Malavai has weathered far worse. This is hardly worth a mention. “Yes. I have been informed you have a situation?”

Miss Shan’s mouth grows pinched. Well. At least someone in this room has an idea of just how hot the water is they have gotten into. “We do. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

Malavai inclines his head faintly. He doesn’t say it was no trouble. This whole situation is nothing but.

To Miss Shan’s credit she doesn’t beat around the bush. Her features settle into grim determination. “You have received the details of the agreement my colleague has chosen to entangle himself with?”

“I have.” And what details they were. Malavai’s eyes are flinty. “If you could restate them for me? For formality’s sake.”

“Of course.” Mister Whitmore looks about ready for his temper to boil over but Miss Shan ignores him and his looming. “A year ago Mister Whitmore, my employee, approached an entity native to the Seven Circles of Ard-Ha for an exchange.”

The name alone sets the air to shivering. If Malavai paid attention to what he sees out of the corner of his eyes he has no doubt he could make out a fleeting shift of shadows, like fire trapped behind stifling drapes. He makes a concerted effort not to.

The Seven Circles of Ard-Ha… more colloquially known as the seven circles of hell. Ard-Ha is home to creatures so shrewd and powerful most people avoid to even say the name aloud, lest it catch the attention of something that might take that as an invitation.

Miss Shan does not hesitate over it even so. “Neither I, nor my colleagues, had knowledge of this fact until this morning when our wards alerted us to the shifting nexus of the contract.” She gives Mister Whitmore a long look. “How could you.”

If Mister Whitmore regrets his actions, he hides that fact well. His face is a mask of frustration. “It was just a year.”

Ah, yes. Just a year. A year in hell. Malavai’s frown etches itself deeper without his say so. “I will need you to put the transgression plainly.” When he gives this memory to the authorities later the case had better be airtight, or he will be right next to Whitmore on the chopping block.

Miss Shan takes a deep breath. “Very well. Upon questioning, Xerender Whitmore has admitted he sold his son to regain his father’s soul.”

The lights flicker. Shadows dance over the pearly-white walls. The edges are impossibly darker than their core, cracks upon plaster and filled to the brim with endless hunger. The abyss is too close. Already, the barrier is eroding under the strain of a contract bent to the breaking point.

It truly is a good thing Malavai has majored in Necromancy. If whispers of decay unnerved him he wouldn’t be here. “You are aware that that action is a punishable offense.”

Miss Shan nods tersely. “Yes. It will be treated accordingly but for the moment Sewlor is our primary concern.”

And if this mess is handed to the courts he might remain in limbo forever.

It’s an unfortunate reality of their system. A contract this volatile might well be frozen, relegated to stasis, where it cannot do harm to innocent bystanders. Until that is the case, however…

“Very well. You have made the right choice in seeking a professional consultation.” That’s about the only thing they have made the correct choice about. “I assume his birthday is today, then? The eighteenth?”

Whitmore grits his teeth but, at a sharp look from Miss Shan, nods grudgingly.

Unsurprising. It could be nothing else. He sold his son to a demon but you can only sell that which you own. With Sewlor reaching the age of majority any technical claim upon him by his father will find its end and so will any obligation his father has bartered him for. 

There is a reason why most entities do not trade in children past a certain age, sentimentality aside. There are too many bloody complications.

In this case, with age marking his independence, the boy will be free but a soul will still be owed.

Whether or not that will bring whatever demon Whitmore was stupid enough to tangle with down upon them all is a matter of legalities. “I need to see the contract.” And not a writhing set of suicidal ink. “The original, if you please.”

Miss Shan purses her lips. “Of course.”

* * *

It’s a work of art.

Gilded with magic and a miasma of power, the words wind over a page of true parchment in looping calligraphy. No missed strokes, no marks of hesitation. If Malavai didn’t have the unenviable task of confirming a loophole in magnificence he could spend hours admiring the attention invested in the document detailing Sewlor Whitmore’s fate.

It is almost a shame there is no fine print.

Despite that the contract is worded slickly enough to warrant some consideration regardless. In the end, however, Malavai has to agree with Mister Whitmore’s interpretation, much as it galls him. “Your estimation is correct.” The demon, whoever it is, has made a mistake, past taking payment that would attempt to repossess itself. Just one. One mistake is more than enough.

“Great. See?” Whitmore throws Miss Shan a look of exasperated contempt. “Can we get on with it now?”

With a last, near reverent touch Malavai re-rolls the parchment. “We can. I will establish the connection momentarily.”

“ _You_ will establish-?“

“Xerender. Let the man do his job.” Miss Shan seems to have finally reached the end of her tolerance. There’s a bite in her voice that wasn’t there before.

That’s just as well. It leaves Malavai free to put his finishing touches to the circle while they bicker. It has already been wrought, by other hands, so he checks and re-checks the moorings as well as adds his own. Only when it is as safe as he can make it, does he interrupt them. “Mr. Whitmore, if you please?”

“It’s about bloody time,” the man grumbles under his breath but he does as he is bid. The freshly sharpened atame breaks his skin cleanly.

The barrier is so thin it starts to flake before the blood has even touched the circle.

As the first drop falls time seems to slow to a crawl. Light breaks on crimson fluid in a kaleidoscope of color. It hits the key-rune of the array, wound from that same blood, gold and pure magic, with the sound of a gong. The bindings ripple.

Malavai grits his teeth against the breeze brushing past him. It carries the scent of cinnamon and spice, an enticing heat that promises nothing but burns yet enchants anyway. He has no doubt it will fill his dreams for months to come.

Ard-Ha is a dangerous place. Even treading with its denizens just this much will leave its marks.

And… well. Speak of the devil.

They peels themself from the aether like a flower coming into bloom. Their skin is a flush of lavender that glitters with miniscule scales in light without discernible source. Delicate jewellery is fairly dripping off their physical form and shifts in the currents of Ard-Ha’s winds, defying gravity in turns, if not entirely. Malavai spares a second to be grateful for that. That strategic curtain of gold is the only thing keeping him from seeing first-hand how very much the demon has chosen to present as male.

There’s little doubt, either way. He is _beautiful_.

The slightness of his build cannot distract from the sharpness of his teeth. His claws are just as wicked, as obsidian black as his eyes. Malavai meets them and does not blink when they fall upon him in turn. Vertigo makes his stomach swoop as his mind threatens to tip into the void. For a moment he catches a glimpse of galaxies within the darkness.

Then he gets a grip on himself.

This, _this_ is the creature Whitmore had thought it wise to cheat? And here Malavai had thought his opinion of his intelligence could not sink any lower. All other assets aside, his presence fills the room with a hum of magic fit to make Malavai's teeth ache.

The demon inclines his head in what reads as curiosity to the human eye. Beneath the crown of flowers on his brow glints a hint of smoothly curved horns among dark curls.

Orange lilies, Malavai registers absently. Hatred and revenge. How promising.

Then he opens his mouth and with a voice like chained birdsong and growling fire, he freezes Malavai’s breath in his chest. “ _Who summons the Wrath of Ard-Ha? Who summons **me**?_”

Bloody _hell_.

It is all Malavai can do not to turn to stare at Whitmore in disbelief, mostly because such a show of weakness would be near suicidal. The _Wrath_. That’s more than a name and names alone mean much. It’s a _title_.

It hadn’t been enough for Whitmore to try and pull one over on a regular, run-off-the-mill devil, had it? No. He had to go out of his way to fuck with a _demon lord_. One named for the embodiment of _ire_.

Some days Malavai truly wonders why he chose this occupation. The parts that force him to clean up after other people’s sheer stupidity he could emphatically do without.

Small mercies Wrath gives him the moment it takes to compose himself in a rare show of courtesy, though he does watch the muscle in Malavai’s cheek jump with thinly veiled amusement. “ _Well_?”

Showtime. Malavai clears his throat and does not straighten his tie. The temptation is great. “I’m Dr. Quinn. I’m a Contractsman of the terrestrial plane and I am calling on you on behalf of my client.” He pauses for effect and because he does not wish to rush over the end of that sentence. Who, exactly, his client is is none of the demon’s concern. “Am I to understand you wish to be addressed as ‘Wrath’?”

No point in asking for a name. Even this faint probe makes the demon’s lip curl. “ _’My lord’ will do._ ”

… as if. Malavai was not born yesterday. “Very well, your lordship.” Here we go. The circle is as perfect as any Malavai has had his hand in but one mistake… well. One mistake is enough. Case in point. “If I may, I would like to proceed to discuss business. You have something in your possession that is not rightfully yours.”

The breeze dies. From one moment to the next the air is stagnant but the burn upon it does not fade. It settles into Malavai’s lungs with a prickle. His shirt sticks to his skin within seconds, tacky with sweat.

“ _You would dare._ ” The stars in the demon’s eyes spark and flicker out again, an endless circle of life and death. “ _Everything within my grasp is **mine**_.”

Spoken like someone who is used to being the top of the food chain.

But not today, he is not. The law is on Malavai’s side and that is all that matters. “I’m afraid not.” With deft hands he unrolls the contract, with its beautiful lines, crisp and clean. “Do you recall making this agreement?”

A shudder crosses the demon’s face. Emotion, made manifest in a corona of magic and expression. It washes over the barrier and past in a spike of heat, terror and adulation. Malavai steels his shields and does not fall to his knees. “ _That is one of mine, yes._ ”

“Well, it is about to be null and void.”

“ ** _What_**.” It’s not a question. It doesn’t even _pretend_ to be a question. There’s so much growl in the syllable it can barely be called a word.

Malavai schools his features to impassivity. He does not eye the way the lilies flower more fully in a shimmer of golden pollen. He does _not_. “I’m afraid so.” With the impeccable poise of one who has spent more than enough time in the company of demons and fae alike to be used to their antics, he soldiers on. “The primary holder of the object of the contract, and your payment, is about to change by rote of pre-established temporal limitations. Hence, the seller is no longer in a position to promise your price to you, for services rendered. By terrestrial law, which you agreed upon as a basis of conduct, see section three, that obligates you to release the object in question post-haste.” Dead silence falls. Nothing and nobody moves. The very thought of it is likely an unwise choice. Nevertheless Malavai feels he must add some clarification. “That means immediately, if you please.”

‘Post-haste’ is a flexible term, after all. Some courts are still tied up in deliberation over the matter of dimensional time dilations and possibly will be for the rest of their natural lives. However long that may turn out to be.

Certainly longer than his own, should this intervention go sideways.

The Wrath finally unglues his eon-spanning gaze from Malavai’s person and turns it on the contract. The parchment crinkles at the edges, as if held too close to a flame. Malavai can relate. Shouldering the demon’s attention is not unlike cupping a palm of magefire. Potent, wild and liable to scorch you for the fun of it.

Not that _fun_ is what the Wrath will have in mind as soon as he realizes he has been had.

As if on cue the temperature spikes. Wrath's mouth _twists_ and the tips of his flower crown come ablaze as delicate petals give up the pretense of being solid. With forced calm, all playfulness forgotten, he rumbles, slowly, “ _I am still entitled to compensation._ ”

“You are. Technically.” All in all the contract _had_ been rather good but not quite perfect. Perfection is all that will ever truly do. “Which you would receive, if and only if the other party agreed to make contact to hand it off.” Or he somehow managed to get his hands on Whitmore directly. As long as there is a summoning circle between them though, he is out of luck. Somehow Malavai doubts Whitmore will throw himself upon a scorned demon's incredibly limited mercy. He doesn’t even have to turn around to feel the smugness radiate off the man.

With the contract itself less than barely legal in their own plane of existence it’s just a matter of taking it to court to get it annulled. That does leave the small matter of just how illegal it is to sell your own child, body and soul, and just how much of his life Mr. Whitmore will likely spend imprisoned for it, but that does not seem to have occurred to him yet.

Perhaps he thinks he has found a way out of that too.

Malavai would like to see him try and he will. He has every intention of being _very_ present for that trial. For now…

The way the demon’s whipcord-thin tail lashes through the air is the only sign of his agitation. His beatific face has turned stony. “ _I see._ ” He reaches out to trace the edge of his contract gently, voice falling to a murmur as bitter as poisoned honey. “ _And you would be complicit in this scam?_ ”

Behind him, Miss Shan draws a sharp breath.

Rightfully. This is dangerous territory to tread upon. It is also where Malavai has made his home. Cooly, he returns, “I am merely fulfilling my contractual obligations, within the boundaries of the rules I have been sworn to.” A formal way of putting it but entirely necessary. He is here as a neutral party and only that. He holds no power past what has been invested in him and no blame. 

_This_ is why you engage Contractsmen, even past their expertise.

He meets the demon’s gaze, in its endless depth, and does not give even an inch. “As I am sure you will too. The settlement, if you would, your lordship.” It’s a subtle dig at his responsibilities and the debt owed but one that does not go unnoticed. The demon’s eyes narrow faintly.

Ironically, a good repute is worth much more to his ilk than Malavai’s own.

No demon lord would be caught dead breaking their contracted word, no matter how much they might be entitled to it. Perhaps Whitmore did know what he was doing, aiming this high.

After a moment that stretches to infinity, the Wrath raises a hand and snaps his fingers. The sound rings through the office with the force of a thunder strike. Malavai blinks, barely that, and when he is looking again there is a young man standing behind the creature. If it weren’t for the firelight playing over his skin, Malavai would term him almost aggressively ordinary.

A teenager, gangly with youth and not quite grown into his limbs, Sewlor looks every inch the sullen boy abandoned by his father to a fate some would term worse than death. He’s wearing a ragged band shirt, jeans that have seen better days and a pair of sneakers on the verge of falling apart.

He doesn’t look up. In fact, life does not seem to return to him until the demon reaches out to tip his chin up and brushes a thumb over his cheek. “ _It seems you’re going home, dearheart._ ”

Malavai presses his lips together as animation is breathed into Sewlor’s face, a spark of light taking hold. “ _I am?_ ” He leans into the Wrath’s caress. “ _Do I have to?_ ”

“ _Yes._ ” There’s almost something like regret lurking in the demon’s expression now, the fondness of a devil for one they’ve made their pet. That poor boy. He has a long road ahead of him. “ _Come then. Off you go._ ”

The Wrath draws back, leaving Sewlor to blink, confused, before he manages to find his feet. To Malavai’s eyes he is not quite certain of what he is doing. Like a sleepwalker he wanders toward the edge of the circle but even in his trance-state he hesitates at the threshold. Old habits die hard.

Whitmore is fairly vibrating but restrains himself. Good. Malavai will not be held responsible if he touches that circle and gets himself snapped up by a livid demon.

Sewlor hesitates. One heartbeat, two. Three… and then he takes the step over the edge. His battered sneaker passes through the bloody golden shine of the circle and comes down on concrete. His passing is barely a flutter in the magic that Malavai compensates for instinctively. He belongs here, by birth, by right and by law and magic knows it.

The confused teenager hesitates again, as soon as he is all the way through. He wraps his arms around himself, shivering despite the oppressive heat leaking through from the other side.

Malavai ignores the way the boy looks back at the entity that has released him with practiced ease if an unsettled stomach. Longing is the least of that look. The rest is well bound up in how Sewlor flinches from his father when Whitmore tries to reach for him.

Malavai ignores that too. He has other things to focus on. Deadly, beautiful things that would take the first chance to drag this entire office down into the depths of hell. “Thank you for your cooperation, your lordship. You’ve honoured your word in deed and assurance.”

The ritualistic phrase sets the contract to gleaming. The demon takes a shuddering breath. “ _I have_.” He could leave it there but he doesn’t. “ _I have returned Sewlor Whitmore to the realm from whence he came, from whence he was given into my keeping for over a year_.”

_What_?

The unease in Malavai’s stomach sparks into a sucking maelstrom. He doesn’t wait for the demon to continue. Whipping around to where Whitmore is still trying unsuccessfully to make his son look at him, he snaps, “You said you gave him away a year ago!”

“I did,” Whitmore snarls back, impatience in every line of his face. “A day, give or take. What does it matter!”

What does it _matter_. Blood is pounding in Malavai’s ears. A _day_. A _year and a day_.

He is reaching for his foci before he has made the decision to do so, a chant on his lips but the power in the air is tearing the words from him, drowning them out. The demon’s voice is vibrating in his head, in his bones, hypnotic and sure.

“ _He has enjoyed food, drink and any hospitality at my hand that I could offer. I invited him into my home, for a year and a day.”_ The howling of the renewed wind falls silent. For a moment Malavai thinks Shan, who is the only one other than him who had the presence of mind to go for the tools of her trade and has an iron grip on the necklace she is wearing, has managed to counter at least that much. Then the Wrath continues, quietly, almost sweetly, “ _My child.”_

And Malavai realizes his mistake. One mistake. It’s all it takes. How could he be so _foolish_.

“He’s not yours, you parasite!” Whitmore is staring at the demon, cursing him when he really should be cursing himself. He’s distracted. He doesn’t see when his son finally looks up.

No, not his son. The creature who once was his son.

Sewlor’s brown eyes burn themselves gold from the inside out. His pupils contract to slits. There’s nothing but hunger on his face when he looks at his once-father, nothing but devouring rage. _He_ does not speak, not yet, but he lifts a hand and unfolds it from where he had held it, clenched tight.

His claws are just as sharp as his master’s. Blood pools in his palm.

Malavai whips a spell from his mind, so quickly and brutally he has no idea what he has cast. The spell tears the knowledge from him in its haste. His brain prickles coolly in its wake. Shan shouts. A wave of force explodes from her, punishingly strong.

Neither of them is fast enough.

The beginnings of a dreamlike, bloodthirsty smile touch Sewlor’s lips as he speaks. “ _My lord_.” He moves, faster than the human eye can see. Whitmore barely has the time to turn, for his eyes to widen in disbelief and incomprehension before Sewlor sinks his hand into his chest.

He opens his mouth but words forsake him. Bloody foam coats his teeth.

Sewlor meets the eyes of his dying father without flinching. His voice echoes through the space between heartbeats. “ _Master, I offer you the blood of my kin. I offer you the gift of my revenge, the heart of my enemy, and the prize that is yours by right._ ” Light, power and the icy touch of souls from beyond the land of the living converge upon him but it isn’t enough. A year and a day, a liminal space, and it is fit to turn a human into a being born of magic. Spellfire tears at the boy but if he feels it at all, it doesn’t deter him. “ _I invite you over the threshold, to come and to go as you please from my home as if it was yours! Free of charge._ ”

No. Malavai’s mouth grows dry. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

Scorching wind wraps around Sewlor like a cocoon. The spells aimed his way shatter into fairy dust. Malavai has to squeeze his eyes shut against the onslaught though the certainty of what he will find when he opens them again turns the blood in his veins to ice.

Silence falls. In it, the soft melody of chains shifting against each other is impossibly loud. “ _Thank you, my child._ ”

On this side of the barrier the laws of nature assert themselves, even over one of as much power as the self-proclaimed Wrath of Ard-Ha. His aura hangs over them and calls the shadows to writhing life but he doesn’t float any longer, as if he weighs less than a feather. Wings born from twilight and smoke crowd the room to the point of suffocation.

They brush through Malavai and he can’t _breathe_. Screaming winds tear through him, lift him up and threaten to push him over the edge of- of-

_The cliff ends right in front of him. From its foot stretches a great expanse of orange-golden grass, painted a bloody red by distant suns. Rocks hang in the air above it weightlessly, bobbing like lazy bumblebees._

_Wind pushes at his back, hot as the bellows of a forge and sweet as spice. It tears at his clothes, at him -_

Malavai gasps. He crashes back into his body with a wrench.

Too close. They’re too close. The lines have been smudged, the barrier of the seal distorted by what is _here_ and should be _there_. He has to close the gate. _Now_.

As if he can hear that thought Wrath glances his way. Wicked amusement curls his lips.

Sewlor seems to have eyes only for him. His father’s body has sunk to the ground but he doesn’t pay it any mind. Like a nervous child he offers his blood smeared hands to the demon he has pulled through, Whitmore’s still warm heart shuddering upon his palms.

Shan is frozen in horror.

Shit.

Malavai’s grip on his focus tightens to the point of pain. Blood slicks his fingers. He knows his duty.

_He_ has opened the way and he can close it too, at any moment. Words of power set his throat and head to ringing. They shatter the space between worlds into a kaleidoscope of colors, shards of pure magic. The circle, sunk into the floor as it is, cracks clean down the middle with a sound more suited to tearing parchment, or flesh.

The lights go out.

The last thing Malavai sees before they do are the demon’s eyes. Their glittering depth burns itself into his mind and turns the darkness to terror. It curls around him like a lover, a welcoming promise of madness.

The emergency lights flicker to life in less than a heartbeat but it might as well have been an age.

They alight on Wrath, a bead of blood smeared on his lips. His servant’s hands are empty.

Malavai is too shaken to banish the tremble from his fingers. He levels his focus at the devil nonetheless. “Begone.”

Sewlor hisses in offense, entirely inhuman. He shifts and so does Malavai, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and trying to calculate exactly how quickly he will have to cast so he won’t be disembowelled when a dark chuckle makes the hair on his neck stand on end.

Wrath looks him up and down with bemused indifference. With the collapse of the connection to his home-plane the ghost of his immaterial wings has dissipated. Even the shine of his jewellery is duller, less other, more worldly. Still he regards Malavai as if he is less than a smudge of dirt on his feet. As if he is insignificant. Tarry anger bubbles in Malavai’s stomach, sour with fear. “I was invited.”

He was, by the Gates of the City of Bones. He was invited. By a citizen of this plane. They didn’t _ask_ Sewlor here, they demanded him back and magic complied. Whatever the boy has become he _belongs_ here once more and technically he can invite whatever relations he has, adopted or otherwise, that he damned well pleases. He is required to do so in a licensed manner, however.

Malavai tries not to tally exactly how many ways the Statute of Interdimensional Migration is being violated here. The operative word being ‘try’.

There’s a reason the accord on changelings alone takes a whole damned book. Not least because once an unbound entity has crossed they are a bloody nightmare to de-invite.

Wrath’s smile turns sharp at the edges. “Would you like to contest my claim, Contractsman?”

… Malavai is not stupid enough to give him a direct answer to what isn’t only a loaded question but already locked and pointed right at him. “The appropriate authorities will have an opinion on that.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Wrath reaches out to put a quelling hand on the back of his servant’s neck. The way Sewlor ducks under it reminds Malavai of nothing so much as an attack dog, barely restrained by the gossamer touch of its master’s will.

There’s no mistaking whose creature he is. To think his own father gave him away to this… Wrath turns his attention to the young man in his grip, proprietary satisfaction in every line of his face. “But you will have to excuse us. We are expected.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” is as much as Malavai can grit out before the demon _laughs_.

The echo of it rings through the space between seconds like shattered glass and chiming bells. “I would like to see you try and stop me.” Where Sewlor bristles once more, he only seems deeply entertained. “You mortals are so feisty. Uncle was right. I will enjoy my time here.”

Warm wind rises, out of nowhere, and the faint pull of magic being wrought without gesture or word is the only thing that gives Malavai the time to try and intervene. His counter is batted away by the eddies of the transportation spell like a duck caught in a hurricane. The backlash sends a spike of pain through his mind.

The pair splinters into the aether before his eyes.

Over the air rushing past his ears he can make out the compelling melody of the demon's voice, who has cupped Sewlor’s cheek like a lover. “Be a dear and invite your siblings too.”

Malavai goes through the motions of the aftermath with robotic precision. He calls in to the office, still in a haze.

What a _disaster_.

This could end his entire bloody career.

He can’t touch the contract, not without inviting accusations of tampering, but he doesn’t need to. He remembers every word. It wasn’t dated fully. It wasn’t bloody _dated_. He should have caught that. He should have asked-

They send him home, as soon as the clean-up crew arrives. The Contractswoman with them barely glances his way. Disdain radiates off her in waves.

They send him home and home he goes. It takes him twice as long as usual because he keeps missing his stops. When he gets there, the door to his tiny studio apartment closes behind him like a tomb. It takes an unreasonable amount of energy to make it to the couch. Malavai drops his briefcase irreverently and buries his face in his hands.

He hasn’t checked his emails but he expects he has been suspended by now.

_Shit_.

He has no idea what to _do_. There is nothing he can do, realistically speaking. Nothing but wait.

Malavai is still sitting there when his telephone rings, an indeterminable amount of time later. He lets it go to voice-mail without moving an inch.

# _Malavai Quinn. Please leave a message after the tone. I will get back to you shortly._ #

The near-ancient machine beeps cheerfully. It was the most he was willing to afford at the time and that doesn’t look like it will change any day soon.

Even if he still has a _job_ come morning. Despair writhes in his gut.

How is he going to repay his loans if he doesn’t? Do you even get paid while your last case is under investigation? This has never happened to Malavai before. It _wasn’t supposed to happen_ , period.

Jaesa’s voice jars him from his spiralling thoughts, tinny but unmistakeable. Her every word is suffused with concern. # _Malavai? I heard about the case._ _I’ve been trying to reach you…_ # She trails off. Malavai stares at his telephone blankly. If she hadn’t called, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

If she hadn’t called, it might be her sitting at home like this.

Would Jaesa have caught the inconsistencies? Would she have thought to ask for a date, for more than ‘as of the day this word was given’ and a vague notion of birthdays?

But it wasn’t her, it was him and he didn’t. He really only has himself to blame.

There’s a rustle of cloth at the other end of the line, as if Jaesa is shifting nervously. Finally, she says, # _I’m sorry._ #

That’s all. Her call disconnects, leaving him alone in the growing darkness of a home that never felt like home, an uncertain future looming before him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This is set before mercurypilgrim’s story, so he WILL be fine, for a given value of fine. Baras might put a word in for him, even. Can’t have the reputation of their agency suffering… and it will put this up and coming Contractsman in his debt, too. Win win, no?)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Themes for this chapter:  
> Seven Devils - Florence + the Machine  
> Midnight Sky - Miley Cyrus  
> ( Yeah, my music collection is a ride ;) )

Jaesa hangs up the phone, her fingers numb. When she licks her dry lips she tastes blood. She has been biting it again. It’s an old habit, one she ditched long ago. Every now and again it rears its head, though, especially on days like this one.

Her hand is still resting on the receiver. What an old-fashioned thing… Jaesa swallows heavily. She shouldn't have asked Malavai to go to that appointment instead of her. Never. She should have just- she should have-

The feeling clues her in before her other senses do. Magic whispers and she hears it, loud and clear.

She was always gifted, even when she was a child, but her teenage years made her magic even stronger. That’s natural, for many people. Magic grows as you grow.

Jaesa can’t quite say that with hers it was the same.

An impression of vastness and pressure overcomes her, a feeling tied to standing on top of a world and looking out toward the horizon, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful. She hasn’t been able to reclaim it, not since she left.

But it was never tied to a place, was it? It’s not a where. It’s a who.

His presence wraps around her and for all that Jaesa is afraid she could weep with how it feels like coming _home_.

Oh, Malavai. He’s so clever, so careful, but he’s only human. He has had what, less than a decade to hone his craft? And he is good, so very good. For a human. Jaesa hoped he would win this but…

(But did she?)

“I’m sorry,” Jaesa whispers, tears prickling in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you apologising to him, or to me?”

She closes her eyes, half in pain, but it only sharpens the reality of what he has brought with him. The scent of spice and fire fills her small flat, warm and sweet. Every move he makes is accompanied by the soft chiming of gold on gold.

Jaesa takes a breath and steels herself.

He hasn’t changed.

She turns around and that is the first, nonsensical thought going through her mind. This plane has dulled his shine, has dragged into reality what is _meant_ to be ethereal, has rooted it in gravity and other earthly nonsense, but apart from that?

Five years, soon six, and he hasn’t aged at all. Even the flowers are still the same, immortal by his will alone. What more would they need to thrive? What more could anyone ask for?

Yes, Jaesa remembers it well, how his love fills you to the brim until there is no space for anything else. Thoughtlessly she lets the word fly that comes to her lips at his sight. It’s not his true name but it’s true enough. “Yon,” is what she breathes and the air shudders with power.

He gives her a long look. Once, she wouldn’t have hesitated to try and chart the endless expanse of stars trapped in his gaze. Now, Jaesa drops her eyes to the floor instead.

She is sorry. Sorry she dragged Malavai into this. Sorry she let this happen. Sorry she didn’t see to it that it happened _sooner_. She didn’t promise, he didn’t make her, but she knew. She knew what he wanted.

Jaesa was a powerful child. Magic loved her but hers wasn’t very useful magic, or at least not in the way her mentor needed it to be. She had a knack but a knack wasn’t enough. A knack wasn’t going to win her any contracts, not at that age.

No. She didn’t grow into a prodigy, a Contractswoman with promise past her peers, more powerful than any of them, until she came _back_.

Once, before she breathed magic as air and knew it like a child knows its mother, Jaesa was a girl with a knack.

She was about to turn seventeen when her guardian, Nomen Karr, decided he had figured out a loophole in interdimensional law big enough to give himself a boost, for a discount. Selling a soul is a generally sticky business and also a terrible idea. But, if he gave away his child for a while, to the right entity, he could gain himself the power he lacked to finally get even with his enemies, for good.

It didn’t have to be _forever_. It just needed to be worded the right way.

Or so he thought.

Jaesa figured all of that out in hindsight. The honest truth of his motivation, of what moved him, she will probably never put together. Then? Then all she knew was the ache in her palm where she had made the ceremonial cut and the sinking feeling in her stomach. For an early birthday present, her mentor, her father, had asked her to be taken away.

‘ _Just a year, my girl_ ,’ he said. ‘ _It’s just a year._ ’

Impotent fury rises within her at the memory alone.

Jaesa has seen much now, so much. She has put in the gruelling work to study contract law in all its intricacies, half driven by a need to know _why_ or at least _how_ and how her mentor could have ever been so _stupid_ -

The other half of her remembered careful word-games and a golden coin pressed into her too small hands by gentle, clawed fingers and _yearned_.

No matter how much time passes, Jaesa remembers it as if it was yesterday. It’s one of the few moments of her time _there_ that she can still recall, even now.

She is feeling twelve today, so twelve she is. The coin is as big as her palm and as thick as her smallest finger. There’s a picture of a woman’s face on it, beautiful and sad. Yon smiles at her interest and draws a small glyph on it.

From the depths of the coin a ghostly figure rises. The woman is wearing a wide, flowing dress and as Jaesa watches she is asked to dance by a faceless suitor. They twirl in circles over her eternal prison, lost in a fantasy.

Jaesa, the seventeen-year-old, wouldn’t like it but Jaesa, the twelve-year-old, just thinks it’s kind of pretty. Still, she scrunches her forehead in a frown. “Isn’t that mean?”

Her guardian chuckles as if she has said something cute. “Is what mean? Letting her live her dreams, forever?”

“But it’s not real.” That’s important, isn’t it? Jaesa feels like that makes a difference.

Maybe Yon feels that way too. She can’t always read him well yet but the flowers on his crown slowly curl into buds. He purses his lips. “It is what she wants.” He touches the coin again, gently, and the woman goes back to sleep again. “Her soul is mine and if it wasn’t, it would belong to someone else. She gave it away. She will never be free. This way she can have that last dance she wishes for, again and again and again. Isn’t that better?”

Even now, grounded in her home-plane, Jaesa can’t quite find an answer that satisfies her.

Ard-Ha is a strange place. To someone from earth, from Jaesa’s plane of existence, it is mind-bendingly foreign. On Ard-Ha, thought becomes reality, wishes curve space. Dreams have weight and feelings… feelings give you power.

Ard-Ha's denizens trade souls like tokens at the county fair, because they hold all that and nothing else means anything, not to a people born from the aether itself, lifted from the void by stray thoughts and sparks of emotion. What good will gold and jewels do you if you can create them from thin air? No, only irreplaceable things hold worth. Memories, feelings, ambitions and the vessels that hold them. Each soul is unique and that makes their value immeasurable.

There is a part of Jaesa that has never forgotten that lesson, or what it felt like to hold a soul-coin in her hand, the weight of it, how precious it was.

Until she went to Ard-Ha, spirited away, she didn’t know that, couldn’t have known that. Few humans do, not until they touch upon the true shape of it for themselves. Nomen Karr didn’t either. _He_ didn’t care for the worth of her soul, her self, only what he could get for it.

It took Jaesa a long time to come to terms with that.

In a way, she was lucky. She wasn’t locked into a pretty golden prison, to live her dreams or nightmares. Yon plucked her up like a kitten out of a box and took her home, instead, and like a kitten he spoiled her. The time Jaesa spent in his keeping was some of the most carefree of her entire childhood. Only her oldest memories can compare, if anything can be said to be comparable to Ard-Ha. If Jaesa dwells on the irony for too long she can feel herself grow bitter like stale coffee.

She tries not to.

She was lucky… but if she had slept that year away, maybe it wouldn't have changed her as deeply as it did. When her time was up, Ard-Ha and Yon had threaded themselves through her being with no beginning, or end. She belonged to them as much as they did her.

But her time did run out.

It broke her heart, when her mentor came for her. A year and a day and Nomen tore her from a land born of wishes and what-ifs given life and re-tethered Jaesa to the terrestrial plane, like he said he would, even as she begged him not to.

He got her back… and he was very careful to make sure _what_ he got back was as much his ward as he could make her.

Jaesa left a piece of herself behind that day. It was torn from her and left her _less_. Left her hollow, for months, until she managed to crawl back from the shock of being thrust into washed-out grey, where her world used to sing with color and breathe sparks of starlight.

The loss almost killed her. She cried for it, for her home, unendingly, inconsolable, to no avail, until the chief-nurse of her ward had her put on suicide watch.

Did Nomen ever love her? Care about her? Jaesa can't say. Humans are a riddle, an exercise in second guessing, if she cannot tell what they feel and wish and dream by the way magic bends around them. Some of what she left in Ard-Ha may just have been what once understood them. _Made_ her human.

Is she? Still?

Being of earth, being mortal, is _hard_. Jaesa has to fold away so much of herself, be so careful with those she meets. Most humans have a sense for it, for the other, especially in her line of work. There at least the tolerance for it is higher. Exposure does its part.

Her own hesitation makes everything harder. Humans are so complicated, so shrouded in their own perceptions. You have to dig deep, to find the truth of their nature.

She never had to doubt Yon’s love for her.

How do you doubt something that is so solid you could lean on it, if you wanted to? That builds you houses, gardens, _worlds_ to play in? Something that crafts you friends from the wind and any pet you could wish for from those wishes alone? Jaesa has spent more hours than she can count curled up in Yon’s fondness for her like a nesting bird, wrapped in layers and layers of shimmering _love_ , sheer as spidersilk and twice as soft.

… how she has missed him. And yet she betrayed him, didn’t she.

Jaesa’s shoulders curve under the weight of her guilt.

Eventually, when her tears ran dry because human bodies are so very limited, furious grief burned itself to exhaustion. There is only so much pain you can feel before you grow numb. Loss has a depth you can plumb, for all that it feels endless at first.

Jaesa grew weary. She let herself forget. She let her memories wash out and she sank into this drab world she had been returned to.

It hurt less, that way, even if the last of the ache never quite left her. Like an old break it bothers her on rainy days, just after the sky has stopped to cry and everything is _new_ somehow. When the air tastes like beginnings and the dust has been washed away, Ard-Ha calls to her in the shimmering reflection of neon lights on wet asphalt.

Jaesa walks past aspiring young artists selling their paintings on the street and she feels its touch. She tastes cinnamon and fire in the jazz solos her next door neighbour practices on lazy evenings.

Dreams are everywhere, you just need to look for them.

But Jaesa didn't have to go looking for them in mortals, in reflections and moments painted in pastels and gold. The damning truth is that if she had reached out, if she had called, if she had _wanted_ …

If she had been brave enough to want, if she had just held on, Yon would have come for her.

She wasn’t. She wasn’t brave enough. She didn’t reach out, she let it all slip away into dreams beyond waking, and she forgot. Six years are not that long, actually. Not long enough to forget a whole year and yet Jaesa can barely remember anything, from her time beyond the Veil.

The edge of Yon’s smile, a hazy imprint of the starry depths of his own soul, or what his kind has for one. Endlessness, a vast, open space, drawn to spirals and flame. A landscape that defies all sense, as if reality itself has turned into a painting.

The golden weight of a sad woman’s soul.

What did she sell it for? Did Yon tell her? He might have. If he did, it was lost, like so many other impossible, terrible, beautiful things Jaesa sees only when she closes her eyes. Liminal spaces… they hold great power. More than even wilful denial can bridge.

Jaesa could have invited him. Once she was her own person again, once the psychiatrists and doctors decided she was as human as she would get, she could have gone home and called on him. He would have come. Jaesa knows it in her bones, like her body knows to breathe without her say-so.

But she didn’t. She didn’t call.

In the end he came anyway. It just took him a while.

Tears prickle in her eyes. There’s barely any gold in them left, turning their dark brown to soft honey, in the right light. So little left, after she tried so hard to pretend it wasn’t there, for so long.

She doesn’t know how she feels. _What_ she feels.

She wants to scream, to yell, to blame him for not being here sooner. For not _fixing_ what happened. Her inner child still wants to believe that he can fix _anything_ , could have done _anything_ , if he just _tried_ -

But even he isn’t that powerful.

She didn’t _call_. Why didn’t she _call_.

‘ _Because I was afraid. I was ashamed, of what they made me._ ’

The truth of the thought resonates within her. With an effort of will Jaesa centers herself on it, not the fear but the _truth_ , takes hold of the foundations of the person she is, was, has become, and looks up. She meets Yon’s gaze.

It’s like plunging headfirst into the ocean. Like sticking her fingers into an electric socket. The feeling so many people term ‘someone is walking over my grave’ takes a hold of her and she breaks out in goosebumps.

He is _endless_.

Jaesa falls into his eyes. Stars stream past her and spiral into eternity, as galaxies unfold before her dizzyingly fast. The sensation of having a body is a distant memory.

Yon could swallow her whole. He could make her one of his stars, dancing in the void forever, so vast and so deep it can’t even be called _hungry_. What would feed it? Nothing could.

Helplessly, Jaesa shivers and warmth wraps around her. It’s alien, as if she is being cupped in enormous hands. They are almost as small as her own, cradle her fingers gently. Tears are streaming down her cheeks, finally free.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she says, even though he knows, he must know, it is right there and gnawing at her heart, bite by nasty bite. The apology tears itself from her wet and raw as an open wound. “I’m sorry.”

“I know, dearheart.” A terrible sympathy threads itself through the warmth of his touch, woven into a tapestry so fine it layers itself over her more comfortably than any dress she has managed to find in her expeditions to clearance sales and Sunday markets. No matter how many times she goes, or how full her wardrobe grows, Jaesa can’t seem to stop looking for it, for…

It takes her entirely too long to recognize it for what it is.

 _Love_.

An ugly sob tears itself from Jaesa’s throat. She reaches out (finally, finally), wraps her arms around his neck in an artless hug and buries her face in his shoulder. She is finally _home_.

* * *

Jaesa cries herself to sleep in his arms. Bottled-up feelings wash out of her in a torrent, the only way this plane will readily allow her. His poor, injured lamb. What a disservice her kin has done her. She used to be so _beautiful_.

She still is, even with her wings clipped to tatters.

Yon tucks Jaesa's hair behind her ear absently and watches her curl in on herself further. He should put her to bed.

But not yet. Not quite yet.

Time is so short here.

With an effort of will he slides off the edge of the couch and pads across the room. Jaesa’s flat opens on a wide balcony. The view is no doubt one of her home’s best features. Yon breathes in the night. His wings unfurl behind him.

Wind catches on the thin membranes and draws them taunt. The feeling is strange and not entirely pleasant. Why terra insist upon this excess of corporeality is anyone’s guess but he can ruminate about that later.

Yon takes to the air soundlessly. The city passes beneath him in a tapestry of glittering lights. Streets wind their way through the behemoth of concrete like pulsing veins of life. At every corner, in every place Yon allows his attention to linger on, he can feel the riot of too many souls packed into space that should be too little to hold their radiance. So many emotions. So much _power_ , spilled carelessly.

Humans are a strange folk.

But Yon resists temptation. This isn’t what he is here for. As pretty as these baubles are, they aren’t his. Not yet. Instead of diving, he climbs higher. Far above the city he catches himself on a skyscraper with practiced ease despite the dizzying drop. The base of the antenna on top of it is more than big enough to hold him comfortably and his company as well.

The scuff of a shoe against the grating of the roof is jarringly loud, this far removed from the noise of the city beneath. Yon can’t supress a crooked smile and he barely bothers to try. “Spying on me again?”

There’s a pause. Then the shadow behind the antenna scoffs, possibly at itself. Sewlor peels himself from the darkness with ill grace. “Just checking.”

Checking what?

Yon is not cruel enough to ask. His disciple’s agitation is a fine-toothed saw against his own most vulnerable places. It makes him strong but it hurts him. There’s no call to press down upon it.

Instead, Yon lets a tendril of his regard sneak out for Sewlor to catch and, while he drags his feet and kicks at loose bits of debris and generally makes a show of taking his time to slink up to join his master, Yon can feel him latch onto the offering like a lifeline.

There's such hunger in the young souls others throw to him so readily. Such an emptiness, waiting, wishing, yearning to be filled.

What makes a demon? Well. As many things as there are kinds and there are many indeed. Yon's own home is just one plane housing beings humans term that way and even there they are manifold.

Sewlor reaches for his love with all the jealous need of a teething youngling and Yon couldn't find it in himself to deny him, even if he wanted to.

How he remembers being young, small and hungry, the only thing tethering him to existence his Grandmother's power. One moment’s inattention and he would have dispersed into the stardust her fury pulled him from.

Adolescent humans are much more durable than little devils.

They are still dependant on their progenitors though, Yon supposes. In a different way but they are. His own children’s scars are proof enough.

Sewlor closes the distance between them, almost furtively, and leans against him, seeking his warmth. He's shivering again. It _is_ abominably cold in this place. Yon can tell even if it hardly bothers him.

Few things manage that. The kind of power he has amassed does come with perks.

Carefully, Yon curves a wing around his youngling. Solid as it is, it should keep the wind at bay at least. "Have you found it?"

Displeasure curdles the sparks of enjoyment Sewlor draws from closeness, that make his soul fizz with pleasure. "No."

Their target is warded well, then. "I see."

The city is spread out before them in rivers of light, a tapestry of mortal life, rife with magic. The moon stands high. It's nearly midnight. Time has such power here.

Seconds tick by, tapping against Yon’s skin like drops of gentle rain. They grow heavier and heavier as they near the apex.

He couldn’t breach the Veil by himself. For all his strength that was, and is, beyond him. He’s not a creature made of contradictions, a being born on the threshold. He’s not _human_. Even if Yon were to wake his dreamers to the last, there are powers they can’t give him.

But they don’t need to.

High above a city that refuses sleep, the moon reaches the zenith. Far off in the clocktower the bells start to toll. Once. Twice. Yon spreads his wings wide. Wind howls past, needle-sharp, and has Sewlor wrapping his arms around himself with a curse. Around them the shadows grow longer.

Third bell. Fourth.

It’s true, demons may not enter this world unless invited but once they are _here_ …

Clouds pass the pale disc of the moon, thrown into sharp relief. They billow like dust, like torn sails flapping in the breeze.

Fifth bell. The natural locus of power swells and Yon _reaches_.

The magic writhes in his grasp, as wilful as the inhabitants of the plane it was born from. It snaps at him and he laughs.

His presence is a stone in the river, inconsequential in the long run, yet it distorts the flow regardless. The tide rises around him. He grabs whatever he can get his hands on and _pulls_ , feels it tear. The ripple cascades through the night.

Down below the more sensitive wake from uneasy sleep. Senior magicians still hard at work look up from their carefully inscribed runic circles, torn from contemplation. Jaesa curls deeper into the pillows on her couch. Somewhere, a child starts to cry.

The sixth bell rings through empty skies. Shadowed by dusty clouds, the moon takes on a delicate sheen of red-orange brilliance. If you look closely enough, you can make out a ghost of firelight and golden grass.

Ard-Ha's reflection barely grazes Yon’s spirit but how he _aches_ for it. He leans into it and closes his eyes, spreads his arms as wide as his wings. “ _Come_ ,” his voice echoes through the space between worlds. The distorted barrier shudders in its wake. “ _The hunt has begun_.”

The moment stretches to infinity, or at least as far as terra will allow. It comes to an end alongside the echo of the bell, petering out in crystalline sweetness. Color washes from the skies in passing shadows, clouds fray and dance. Around Yon and Sewlor the darkness grows less deep. As it pulls back, a handful of shades peel away from it, dripping remnants of the void.

Under Yon’s bemused eyes they grow solid. Terra forces them into shape, for all that their nature attempts to defy it. Six legs become four, eight eyes melt together until only two remain. Swirls of nightsky smooth into fur. His hellhounds bristle with unease.

Poor things.

There is no time to waste, though. They only have until the end of the witching hour. Keeping them on this side until then alone will take a certain focus. Already, Yon can feel reality attempting to reassert itself. He breathes deep and the night curls around his soul. A lick of his will is all that’s needed to make his servants straighten in attention. “Go.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter music: Demons - We ARE FURY  
> Enjoy ;)

Morning dawns grey and miserable. It’s the kind of start to a day that makes you want to crawl right back into bed. Jace Malcom prides himself on never once having fallen to that temptation but it certainly is one.

Now, maybe, just maybe, his marriage would have survived longer than the few months it did if he _or_ his ex-wife were the kind of people who put anything but their job first every once in a while. It is what it is. He can’t change himself any more than he can crawl out of his skin and he wouldn’t want to change Satele. She has her causes and he has his.

Case in point.

Jace bends over his steaming coffee cup and inhales in the vain hope that it will chase the all-nighter he pulled from his bones. God, but he isn’t getting any younger. He is too old for this shit. You would think he has seen it all but people _keep surprising him_.

Yesterday some poor idiot pulled an actual devil through the barriers that protect their plane. Not just any old demon, no, he called up a devil straight from the deepest pits of hell. And then he let it fuck right off into the night. Jace very nearly pulled his hair out when he read that report.

The only oracle that didn’t start babbling nonsense and foaming at the mouth when they tried to scry on that disaster was Master Gnost-Dural himself.

After their resident chief specialist keeled over, stuck in an feedback loop she has yet to recover from, Jace damn near broke his door down. By the time they called for Sana-Rae two of her juniors had already been felled like wheat at harvest but she had given it a shot anyway. Not a minute into her meditations she had started to convulse, just like the others. Unlike theirs, the words she kept repeating over and over again had at least been coherent. ' _The dragon is coming. It is coming. Beware the devourer! It is coming. It is here.'_

Sana's voice was still echoing in Jace's ears, hollow where her eyes were filled with terror, when Master Gnost-Dural opened the door for him, in his pajamas and evidently surprised.

That was an unpleasant first. The man _wasn’t expecting him_. That still gives him the shivers. Gnost-Dural is a seer nearly without peer, right up there with the Justices and high courts. When a case goes sideways, the venerable master will usually already be waiting for Jace with a steaming cup of coffee, made just the way he likes it. Not so this time.

When Gnost-Dural came out of his trance the first thing he said was ‘Oh dear.’ If Jace goes the rest of his life without every hearing that from him again it will be too soon. By all powers that be, they couldn’t even triangulate an approximate location. The demon is too powerful.

The chill that had settled into Jace’s bones when Gnost-Dural asked for a name and he naively answered with the moniker it had provided has yet to leave him. The seer paused over his incense, growing entirely still. ‘ _The Wrath? Are you certain?_ ’

‘ _Yes. Why?_ ’

Why, indeed. Because they have one of the _major arcana_ of Ard-Ha loose in their fucking city. Jace hasn’t had a wink of sleep.

“Dorne!” His bellow makes half the bullpen jump. The intern drops their tray of coffee cups and darts behind the water dispenser. Huh. Good instincts.

Lieutenant Dorne flinches upright from where she was bent over her desk. There’s a piece of scrap paper stuck to her cheek. If he weren’t in such a terrible mood, Jace would be tempted to smile.

As it is, they are all wearing a bit thin. The first few days of a new emergency are always the worst. “Any news?”

No such luck. Dorne’s mouth sets into a severe line immediately. She plucks the paper off her face. “No, sir. Line’s still quiet.”

Damn it. You’d think something that makes so many waves would be easier to find.

Jace resolutely doesn’t jump down the rabbit hole that’s contemplating the question of how the heck they will banish the thing when they _do_ find it. His query is still in limbo down in the department for contract law gone wrong. The devil was _invited_ , by a forcibly reclaimed changeling under duress. That’s territory so sticky it rivals the swamps of Dagobah.

Jace can only hope he’ll hear back before it starts dropping more bodies.

They always do. It’s not a matter of if it will kill again, just when.

Before he can give her new orders, Dorne’s phone rings. The shrill sound cuts into the tension in the bullpen like a knife. Dorne drops out of parade rest and flails through stacks of reports to get her hands on it. Sticky notes go flying in a rush of colourful, now defunct, organisation.

… he really should have a talk with her about that.

“Precinct five, department for supernatural incidents, Lieutenant Dorne speaking. How I may I help you?” At least she sounds as crisp as he could wish for.

Dorne is one of his best officers. She has one of the highest closing rates in his entire department. There’s a reason Jace takes the occasional avalanche of sticky notes with grace. They all have their quirks. Comes with the territory.

But Jace doesn’t have much time to mull about how he should get on with filing her next promotion. As she listens to her caller, Dorne’s expression turns grim. “I see, sir. Could you give me your details? We will send you a patrol right away.”

He has a feeling they’ve just run out of time.

* * *

What a bloody mess. “Yes, dad. Sir. I’ll be right there.” Theron will put that first one down to how much sleep he hasn’t had. Jesus. He has been high-jacking ley-lines all night. If he has to do one more scan his head will explode. The glyphs inked into his temple throb at the mere thought.

# _Hurry. There’s no time to waste._ #

“I know, dad. Boss. I _know_.” Aventreya on a pogo-stick. They _are_ hurrying. If Lana breaks any more traffic regulations they’re going to end up arrested. For their _sins_. “We’re on our way.”

# _I just want to make sure you take the situation seriously-_ # His father says, earnestly, and Theron’s last vestige of patience gives _out_. Oh, fuck him. Before Malcom can add anything else, he slams the button to end the call.

Blessed silence.

In the driver’s seat Lana raises an eyebrow, eyes glued to the street. The trees of the promenade are passing them by in a worrying blur. “Did you just hang up on the Chief?”

Did he ever. Theron closes his eyes and tries to pretend he is not in a tin can hurtling down the highway at speeds no human body should ever reach. “No.”

They have enough problems without his dad backseat driving their investigation.

Theron gets it. He does. If it was him glued to a desk at the precinct, he'd probably be tap-dancing on his officers' nerves too.

Lana pulls a turn that has his stomach jumping into his throat and mutters, "Almost there."

Thank _everything_. Next time he is taking a taxi. Can't be worse.

In all honestly though, Theron has lost count of how many times he has made that vow. His bank account keeps convincing him otherwise. "Handerson and Third, right?"

"Yes." Lana sounds about as enthused as he feels about that address. Upper scale, on the edge of the financial district and the upper class high magic neighbourhoods. Even if the victim is a nobody, the vultures will be all over them in hours. This case just went from bad to worse.

On second thought, maybe good old dad had more reasons than one to blow up his phone. If they've got a leak already, he's probably drowning in press notifications.

Theron is never, ever getting promoted that far. Ever.

As he thinks that, Lana accelerates a hair more. They screech across a speed bump that has Theron nearly brain himself on the headrest of his seat.

Oh boy. Maybe a desk job wouldn't be so bad, rabid reporters included. Lana drives like a _maniac_ , on a good day. Today is not a good day.

If the press _has_ caught wind of the stiff they haven't sussed out a location yet. It's something. At the very least Lana doesn't mow down any paparazzi when they finally make it there.

She very nearly takes out a few gawkers but Theron has learned to ignore little things like that. They've been partners for about five years now. You can get used to a _lot_ in five years _._

He still staggers out of the car with sea-legs to rival a pirate.

While Theron is busy figuring out where he left his stomach and his heart, Lana slams the door on the driver's side and strides up the sidewalk. He has to leg it after her, or be left behind to collect tickets from the meter maid that is giving them the evil eye.

No dice. None. Lana can pay her fines herself.

It’s a pretty place, all told. One of those apartment buildings that play at being high risers, concrete, steel and glass all over but only five stories. There's an entrance hall on the ground floor _and_ a lobby.

Next to an artfully clipped boxtree officer Carsen is grilling the doorman. He looks about one wrong word away from a nervous breakdown. "I swear, no strangers came by, no one went out. Nothing unusual happened! Mister Rothschild got home at eight thirty, a bit early, but he looked well enough. Our wards are state of the art. I don't know how anyone could have-"

Theron tunes out the rest and gives Kira a nod in passing. She returns it and jerks her head toward the nearest corner. In a discrete nook a camera is turning towards them lazily.

Theron knows the type. It’s got bells and whistles out the wazoo. Twenty-four hour surveillance is the only rotation that kind of investment pays off on. So, probably a dead end down here. Going by their description of the probable perpetrator that fits the profile.

Rothschild lived all the way up on the fifth floor. The elevator ride is tense. Nothing to see here either. The plush carpet is pristine and Theron could check his five o’clock shadow in the wall panels if he wanted to. On the other hand… ‘ _If I was a killer, this is how I’d leave the thing._ ’

Something to consider.

The hall is carpeted too. That registers as an afterthought and barely that. As soon as the elevator doors open the psychic residue slaps Theron harder than his last blind date when he told them their glamour was flaking.

For the record, it was.

Compared to the aura of this place a failing cosmetic upgrade is a laugh. Before Theron’s eyes the walls are peeling. Underneath cracked plaster the concrete _breathes_. It contracts and expands wetly, like the heart of a giant, like marrow come alive and breaking the bone to free itself.

It’s not real. It isn’t. God, Theron hopes it’s not real.

Lana has to grab him by the elbow and steer him past the crime scene technicians securing the scene, or he would have bowled them over. Shit. The whole hall is lit up with power like a Christmas tree. There’s so much raw magic lingering in the air his array tingles as if someone has set off a lightning glyph in front of his face. The physical world is hard to keep track of through that kind of haze.

With monumental effort Theron tracks the highlights anyway. The door has been opened but there are no signs of forced entry. On the metaphysical plane it is scorched to hell and back but from the inside. The damage drapes itself over reality, warps the door and frame beyond recognition before they snap back to perfect health.

Opened with the spare key, the report said. The maid found him, didn’t she? When she came by to clean.

Well, for her sake Theron hopes that she won’t have to.

The carpet in the front hall of the apartment is wet. A mop and bucket lean against the wall. Bucket’s empty.

Inside, it looks as if a bomb has gone off. Open floor plan. Classy, if you go for that kind of thing. Worth a fortune, or it was before their perpetrator left the living room a wreck.

The wall-spanning windows have been blown out, or rather _in_. Glass shards crunch under Theron’s shoes.

In his double-vision pieces of it are still hanging in the air, twirling lazily. Every pulse of magic makes them flicker like a faulty TV screen.

The windows aren’t the only thing the intruder tore a man-high hole through. Beyond jagged edges that gape like a maw Theron can make out the severed threads of the wards that should have kept this from happening. The gap punched through them is almost perfectly round, as if they were hit by an oversized cannonball. Brute force, no finesse. What the _fuck_.

‘ _But’_ , Theron corrects himself mentally, ‘ _that doesn’t add up, does it?_ ’

“Lana?”

Her grip on his arm tightens minutely. “Yes?”

Words, Shan. Figure them out. Hell, with this much spell residue dragging his attention every which way even _thinking_ is a challenge. “We didn’t get an alert.”

It’s a testament to how well-oiled their partnership has become that she turns to him a little more, a frown on her face. Lana's own power shimmers around her like a halo. “No. The first we heard of it was when it got called in.”

She’s trying to follow where his brain went. Hah. _Theron_ wishes he knew but they’ll get there. “Ward’s busted.”

Where his mind is still cottony with input, his partner’s reaction is immediate. She draws a sharp breath through her teeth. Right. They _should_ have gotten an alert. _Anyone_ within a block should have known what was going on, the moment the wards broke. A cascading failure would have woken sorcerers from here all the way to the Spire.

But it didn’t. Because the ward didn’t fail. Someone punched a hole in it and it didn’t _fail_. That should be fucking impossible.

Wards aren’t _physical_. They’re not walls, though they can pretend to be. Point is, they’re not. With the mesh disrupted, they should have reset or collapsed, no in-between.

Theron musters the frayed edges. Threads of warding magic float freely but make no move to reconnect. For some reason it reminds him of torn silk, strong, beautiful and irrevocably ruined.

“We’ll need a specialist to check the keystone.” Like a damned machine. Sometimes Theron really envies Lana for her mind. He’s still stalling out and she’s leagues ahead, cutting to the core of the matter with crystal clarity. But that’s why they make such a good team. “Do you see anything else?”

Does he _see_ anything. Oh boy. What doesn’t he see. Theron lets his attention stray through the room, about to quip at her, when his eyes and the full force of his sigils finally falls on the thing that should have caught him from the start.

Fuck.

Whatever got Rothschild went to town. There’s a hole in his chest the size of his head. Theron is sensing a theme here. Rothschild’s heart is nowhere to be found and if he were the betting type he’d say they won’t have any luck on that front, either.

That isn’t what has Theron zoning out again, though.

He has seen quite a few grisly scenes in his time. When magic goes wrong it usually goes wrong _badly_. This is a sight Theron’ll never get used to, though.

“Theron?” Lana’s concern anchors him but… yeah.

There’s power all over, haemorrhaging wards, alarm spells gone dead and dissolving, attack and defence all mixed up but even underneath all that the shock of what happened should be palpable. Death leaves an imprint. Always.

But under the riot of stale spellfire, Rothschild’s body is a perfect void.

Theron’s stomach slowly turns to a leaden weight. ‘ _Yeah. This was our guy._ ’

“It’s gone. His soul’s gone.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More soundtrack notes! ;)  
> First half: NCIS Theme  
> Second Half: Call me Devil – Friends in Tokyo

Looking over the aftermath of a soul-theft is bloody disconcerting.

You can’t even call it murder. That’s… more of a side effect. The soulless are, by definition, no longer alive even if they’re up, about and chewing on other people. At least they don’t have to worry about that last bit here.

Theron shudders. Zombies. Ugh. Messy business, whether they have a pulse or not.

Soul-stealing, that’s a league all of its own. Even thralls generally still have theirs. Compulsion doesn’t tear out the very core of who and what you are, it just muddles it. As long as you have that much, there’s always hope. On that scale Geralt Rothschild is shit out of luck.

He’s empty.

That’s the only way Theron can describe the nothingness left behind in Rothschild’s body. It’s not enough. How do you put the feeling of an absence where there should be something into words? Beyond the physical there is no trace of Rothschild’s last emotions, or his last moments. The void is absolute.

Bodies that have lost those traces to time, that have been found so late that the violence of what happened to them is nothing but a faint echo, are slowly reclaimed by what surrounds them. Like abandoned buildings, nature has a way of creeping back in and so does magic.

But Rothschild is just… empty. He’s a spot of- of- A spot where things aren’t. There is nothing he _is_ , no color, no sound, no feeling. He isn’t. He isn’t anything. Everything he was is gone, ripped out so suddenly magic balks at compensating.

That’s not the worst thing that can happen, actually. A sudden rush of magical power, flooding in to replace _other_ things can leave a fucking mess. Theron could tell stories.

Thankfully, this won’t give him a new one. Still, even though they’re in the clear on that front, absences _attract_ things. It’s good they got here so fast. The coroner will know how to handle the body properly.

Coins on the eyes and sarcophagi, effigies of watchers and burials upside down… Every tradition has its origin. Dig deep enough and you’ll find it, if you dare.

Lana’s voice tears him from his thoughts. “You done with that?”

Is he? Theron purses his lips and takes one last sweeping look at Rothschild’s body. Nothing he can do here. Nothing he’ll find, reaching for what isn’t there. No answers, at least. “Yeah, I am.”

His knees crack as he levers himself up out of his crouch. Wow, how long has he been down there? A while, judging by Lana’s not quite concerned glances. She steadies him with a hand on his elbow. “Are you alright?”

Warmth touches his heart, melting his unease a little. At least he isn’t dealing with this on his own. If you had told him five years ago he’d be grateful to have been assigned to work with a partner… yeah. “Not really but I will be.”

God but he hates cases like this.

Back to business.

Rothschild lived alone. There’s no hint of another person in his condo. Half-size dishwasher, only one bedroom. Double bed but the clothes in the wardrobe are all the same size. Same taste too. Expensive, understated. Well, everything but the watches.

Theron glances over the collection with his eyebrows raised before he pushes the drawer back into place. Wow. They’re going to have to catalogue that for sure.

Seems Rothschild was the kind of guy to live in a suit. Blazers, matching trouser, perfectly starched button-down shirts. Each comes with a matching tie and pocket square. Jesus. That’s a hair too much organization for Theron’s taste.

Even his socks are arranged by shade. White, grey, black. He leafs through them half-heartedly before moving on to the underwear drawer. What a glamorous life it is to be a detective. Theron snorts. At least he drew the long straw. Lana’s in the bathroom with the clothes hamper and a miniature-sized garbage can while _he_ is rooting through silk boxers.

Designer boxers. Silk designer boxers. What the fuck. He doesn’t even want to know what those cost.

Wait a moment. Theron pauses in the middle of poking at one of the underpants and pushes it aside. There’s something there, under the orderly pile of underwear. A thin, square box has been shoved to the very back of the drawer. Carefully, Theron pulls it to the front.

It’s old. Looks out of place, in the glossy drawer of a guy who paid for a maid to come by every day so he wouldn’t have to see a speck of dust. Theron takes a deep breath and steels himself. The glyphs on his temple come alive with an inaudible hum that echoes through his bones. Even here, in the bedroom, the air is thick with magic. Sparks of it float by like dust motes and fizzle out when they settle on something solid. The carpet crackles with electricity that is the furthest thing from static.

The black leather covering the box is worn at the edges but it hasn’t been handled frequently. Not in a long time. It has the desolate, greyish sheen of abandonment that Theron has never seen in anything but objects humans used to use and then put away to be forgotten.

Why did Rothschild keep this here? Among things he used every day?

Slowly, leery of what he may find, Theron unhooks the latch. It opens easily enough. Inside there’s a stack of paper. Thick paper, rough now but it… it used to be glossy, didn’t it. Theron can make out a ghost of it, a memory of shine. A faded imprint of emotion lingers over them, impossible to identify. He turns the first one over.

It’s a photograph. A young boy, maybe thirteen, in a suit he obviously hates. He’s scowling at the camera. His bangs are falling into his face and he has shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers as far as they will go, bunching them up and ruining the fall of the blazer.

Theron stares at it for a moment, lets the details sink in, before he moves on.

They’re all like that. Some older, all the way to baby pictures but the rest... the whole stack, photographs, of that same boy. Sometimes Rothschild is in the picture with him. Sometimes there’s a woman. The boy seems to like her better. When he’s looking at her, he smiles.

On the back of the last picture there’s a dedication. ‘ _Alexander Rothschild, may his spirit find peace._ ’

Oh.

Looks like their victim had some baggage.

Theron is carefully putting the photos back to be bagged and tagged when Lana steps out of the bathroom with a huff. “Find anything?”

Her mouth grows pinched. “Not really. If the killer cleaned up, they didn’t do it in there. You?”

“Maybe. Nothing useful, though.” He puts the box aside, open, so she can have a look and starts rooting through drawers again.

Like him, she flips through the pictures. “Cute kid,” Lana says after a while, pensively. “Looks like a handful.”

Yeah, he does. Looks like Theron did, on his own school photos, when he was a teenager and miserable.

He glances at her but she’s not looking at him. Small mercies. Instead, Lana smooths her gloved fingers over the aged paper more gently than most people would give her credit for. Her voice is soft and a little sad. “I wonder what happened.”

Theron presses his lips into a thing line. “Nothing good.” It never is.

They still have half the bedroom to go but before they can get back to that one of the crime scene technicians shoves the door open with more force than strictly necessary. His face is kind of waxy, his eyes are wide and Theron pushes himself upright without a need to be prompted.

“Sorry detectives, the coroner is here and she- there is- there’s something you need to see.” Theron’s stomach clenches. If it was a new guy… but it isn’t.

They hurry off to the living room, Lana hot on his heels. The coroner _is_ here. She has set up her kit, the tarp’s already laid out but Rothschild hasn’t been moved an inch. His shirt has been peeled back, though. Around the hole in his chest squiggles crawl over his skin.

At first glance Theron almost puts those down to veins and arteries but…

Aw, fuck. It’s a sigil. It’s a goddamned glyph, fragments of one, at least.

Lana barrels past him, already focused like a laser scalpel and he half-expects her to ask him how he didn’t see that.

She doesn’t. They both know how. Like Rothschild’s body, the array isn’t only inactive, it’s empty, a light sucking void. Any residue that clung to it was destroyed when Rothschild’s soul got torn out. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots, though.

This wasn’t just murder. It was a sacrifice.

Shit. What is this bastard up to?

* * *

Yon closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. Warm water runs over his skin in rivulets. Steam is hanging in the air and fogs the see-through walls of the shower. He breathes deep.

What a luxurious thing to enjoy. So physical. His senses are so limited here but that seems to sharpen them.

Slowly, he runs his fingers through his hair. At his feet the last dregs of red are washed away. He should get out. Soon. There is much he needs to do and little time.

His bones are still humming with power.

Collecting souls is an addictive thing. Yon would say ‘for his kind especially’ but that’s not quite true. They have the natural inclination, the _necessity_ of it, branded upon them by birth, yes, but the addiction? The rush, the high of mainlining pure magic? That is universal. One could argue it is worse for mortals. They’re not equipped to handle it.

Then again, perhaps that is just because they are new to it when they start and rarely make it far before they burn themselves out. A few hundred souls ago, maybe a thousand, when Yon was younger and more driven by hunger, the rush was more enchanting too. The power sparking under his skin would have had him high for days. The need for more made him ravenous.

Yon raises a hand above his head and rolls his wrist. Between his fingers a golden coin starts to materialize. It drags itself from the aether grudgingly, in a nebula of golden dust. Light glints off its surface and throws Xerender Whitmore’s screaming face into stark relief.

He should have known better than to try and cheat a demon and he should _never_ have hurt Yon’s disciple the way he did. There will be no dreams for him, only nightmares. At least for a while yet. He needs to be punished and Yon is feeling vindictive.

Terror is rising from the coin like mist, sticking to Yon’s fingers in powdered fear and sinking into his very being. It prickles on his tongue, a shock of burning cold. He shivers, a smile tugging at his lips.

His children, the ones that had more time in their worlds, tell him syphoning a soul’s emotions feels a little like drinking hard alcohol, if alcohol was magic and went to your head with the lightning touch of power. He’ll have to try that for himself.

Yon takes the time to savor the taste. It will grow stale soon enough.

No soul can be tormented forever. That is a myth as enduring as time but it is just that, a myth. One mortals cling to, perhaps because the truth terrifies them more than even the prospect of endless suffering. That, after all, is a rather abstract thing until you are subjected to it.

The truth of the matter is different. While disembodiment provides tools that would otherwise bring a swift end it doesn’t ensure eternity.

Torture a soul long enough, make it experience pain and fear and horror without respite, and they wear thin. Their coin will grow dull, worn as if by rough handling, and eventually… eventually they die a true death, the way Yon’s own people do. They disperse into stardust, specks of magic floating through the aether, and what they were is no more.

There is a reason the more callous of his kind are forever grappling for more.

Too many demons bleed their sacrifices out until they break under their touch, in their greed. But without them, they can’t exist. The drive to feed is a true need, for devilkind. Only the most powerful of them are cemented as reality independently.

Yon himself is so strong now. His collection helps, it buoys him up and gives him power, makes him more _real_ , but he could live without it. He doesn’t need to force feelings from his dreamers like blood from stone.

Indeed, he is anchored enough in himself to feed others. That is what it means to be a Demon Lord.

The Prince of Hellara, the ruler of the innermost circle of Ard-Ha, can support legions. His stray thoughts take on a life of their own without a need for conscious intent. Around him, demons are born by the dozen and they die just as quickly, unless they can draw his attention.

Yon’s own creator was a little like that but only a little.

Andra was rage given form. She could have spawned undirectedly, if she had less control. Yon was an intentional child, though. He is almost sure of that, that he was wanted. His first memories are of being cradled by endless fury, _being_ fury, fury and joy. She loved him. There was security in that, safety.

He saw enough of others who weren’t so lucky. Demons, weak or just young, who lost the regard of those who anchored them, or their last coins in a game they should have known better than to play. Fall far enough and any chance seems worthwhile.

There are few things as terrifying or pitiful as those who have wrung their dreamers dry, with nothing to fall back on. Theft is a death sentence, though that doesn’t deter all. You subsist on what you can gain within the unspoken laws that bind them all, or you perish, one way or another.

But Yon was loved. His creator’s rage was a warm and steady burn inside his chest, shielding him from the void. He didn’t have to fear being forgotten, not more than children who are told stories in the comfort of their bed fear the night outside the window.

It made him a little spoiled, Yon supposes. He was a picky youngling.

His first coin was a gift, as is tradition, and Andra let him choose it himself. He still has it. A sleepy beat next to his heart, it warms him forever, raging even when fast asleep. ‘ _A dragon_ ’, his creator told him when he cradled it to his chest the first time, in an unconscious pulse of jealous possessiveness. There was a smile playing over her lips, vicious and approving. ‘ _It’s old as ages and twice as furious. A good choice. Be careful with it. It bites._ ’

It does, has nipped Yon once or twice over the years, but that is a small price to pay. That first coin has never shown an inclination to wear and tear. It is happy where it is, dreaming of hoards and intruders it can scorch to ashes. Even nightmares just leave it snarling. There are few things that can frighten a dragon.

His second coin was a gift too. Yon did not like it nearly as much. Aunt Leli meant well, he was sure, pressing it into his small hands and gifting it to him in a burst of magic that left his wings tingling, but it was so… icky. Already showing stains of discoloration when he got it, it was forever _sad_.

Yon could scare it for a while but then it would go right back to being miserable. Mostly, he just felt bad for it, for the old woman that had given away her soul to get her cat back, if only for a few years, so she wouldn’t have to die alone. He can see that now, in hindsight. As a youngling all he knew was that he didn’t like her coin.

It did feed him. Sadness is fuel too, even if it isn’t as burning as anger. All emotions are. The more intense the feeling, the more power it grants. Fear is strong and it is easy to get but it fades just as quickly. Rage is a _firestorm_. How long it lasts depends entirely on the soul it is born from. Compared to that, sadness, though enduring… it tastes washed out, at least to Yon. He is a child of fury, though. He was born from anger and it feels like home.

Still, Yon has held quite a few coins he didn’t like in his life. He _can_ subsist on them, one way or another, he just doesn’t want to. Didn’t even when he was young and should have known better than to turn up his nose at any spark of magic he could make his own.

He shouldn’t do that now, either, and he won’t. He needs what power he can get.

Yon turns Xerender’s coin and watches the light play over it, watches his face change when no one is looking at it to grow static again when he is. Vengeance is its own reward and he does need this one, for the time being. This one and a few more.

Debts must be paid and if they pave his way? All the better.

Decisively, he turns off Jaesa’s shower and shakes off excess water. He really should work out his glamour at least. Solid as they are now, he has to take care to keep his wings close in quarters as cramped as these. It's a pain. Physicality has its downsides.

Yon is towelling his hair dry when he finally feels Sewlor pull on his power.

A methodical one, his disciple, though you wouldn’t know by how broody he often is. But he has reason to be careful. Much of what they must achieve rests on his shoulders, if not his alone. Yon closes his eyes and gives him what he needs. What magic he has gathered flows out of him to fuel the summoning and leaves him shivery in its absence. It’s a good thing the physical world chains him to existence. He has all but exhausted himself tonight.

It is worth it, though. Soon, they can take the next step.

He needs what help he can get. Yon is too aware of how very carefully he has to play his hand here. Time is short.


	5. Chapter 5

Magic _crackles_ under Sewlor’s call. Jaesa can feel it hum in her bones all the way from the kitchenette of her tiny apartment. She pauses, the knife in her hand hovering over the tomatoes for a moment, indecisive and shaky. Finally she puts it down with a shuddering breath.

This… this is what she chose. Isn’t it? Jaesa is so tired of being alone. She doesn’t want to lose Yon when she has just gotten him back.

But Yon has his own plans, his own desires, and if she chooses _him_ , she chooses this.

The pull intensifies as the call is answered, magic cresting in a wave and setting her teeth on edge. Her ears ring with the cascading chime of power, dancing upon the threads Sewlor has spun.

She… couldn’t have refused Yon this, could she? He would have done it anyway and she missed him so much- Jaesa balls her fingers and clenches them, tight. She’s scared. Scared, of what Yon is doing. Scared they will get caught. She… she’s just scared. For family, for _herself_.

What will happen to her if this gets out?

‘ _I won’t have to worry about how to deal with next emergency without any holidays, at least_ ,’ is the first, slightly hysterical thought darting through her mind.

She took the day off. Hell, she might have taken the week off, she can’t really remember the details of her phone call to the office. She might have tried to sell the assistant to her manager that she caught malaria and her grandmother is going to get married so she has to leave the city for a while.

It’s a good thing Anna likes her. She’ll cover for her, probably.

Gods.

If they catch Yon, they’ll try to send him back. They’ll _try_. That’s… that’s procedure, even for entities that- that-

He and Sewlor, they came home late last night. Morning light was sneaking through the blinds when Jaesa got pulled from uneasy sleep with a crick in her neck. Head still foggy, the first thing she had seen against the palest ghost of sunshine was the monstrously comforting silhouette of her master.

It took a moment to register that he was… was… dirty. That the fingers he was carding through her hair were-

Jaesa has spent much of this morning on her knees, scrubbing the carpet with bleach. Once Yon is done in the bathroom she’ll be pouring it on every surface and into the drain.

Yon doesn’t think about this kind of thing, _has never had to_ , but she’s the next best thing to a lawyer. She knows the laws of the terrestrial plane as well as he does his own. Sightlessly, Jaesa stares at her half-diced tomatoes and tries to feel out the shape of the terrible bottomless certainty in her heart that her decision has been made.

She’s not going to lose her family again. Not if she can help it.

She… she can’t.

Even if she is too human now where they aren’t, flinches where they don’t. Even when she knows, intrinsically, that what they are doing is _wrong_.

They killed someone last night. That’s about all Jaesa is certain of. There was too much blood. The glow of a freshly harvested soul clung to Yon, physically and metaphysically. Satisfaction, gold in gold, gilded his skin and made him shine.

It made her _hungry_. For a moment there Jaesa felt warmth flash through her, greed, desire and grasping need curling tight around her heart, bunched up into a soundless call a freshly realized demon-ling might voice.

She had fled to get her cleaning supplies before she could get too close a look at Yon’s face.

There was pity there, Jaesa thinks, the aching sort of sympathy of someone seeing a loved one starving themselves and knowing you can’t help. That they won’t accept help. Can’t accept help.

Jaesa… doesn’t actually know if she could say no if he _did_ offer to give her- to give her-

She had a soul once. Just one. Not her own, she isn’t sure what kind of shape that has taken, so that one may also be a thing of the past but… she had another soul that… well, it did belong to her. It was a gift, Yon’s gift, a master’s gift to their disciple, a parent’s gift to their ward.

How she misses her, her beautiful dancer, all grace and sorrow. Jaesa could make her happy for hours at a time just by plucking on her dreams and helping her try out new steps instead of mourning a long lost love. Her joy tasted like sunshine and morning dew. It was as soft as the silky petals of her mother’s roses.

While Jaesa had her soul-coin, she was only ever a thought away. But she… lost it. And maybe that’s for the best, no matter how it aches. She couldn’t be human, if she still had it. That’s the thing with souls, they take up space inside of you, space a human doesn’t have to give. If you try to make them fit anyway that rarely ends well.

In her small guest room, where all furniture has been shoved aside to make room for the circle, Sewlor finishes his incantation. The barrier between worlds bends out of shape and Ard-Ha reaches across with searing fingers that brush over Jaesa's very soul. Magic _roars_.

It strains against the wards Yon wove into the air of Jaesa's home with a mastery humans can only dream of, setting the walls ablaze with gold. It’s a good thing he was so thorough. If any if this leaked out they have the Special Forces beat her door down in seconds. The power is bright as a beacon.

Under the relentless pull of magic the Veil _gives_. Sulfur burns in Jaesa’s lungs, heat makes the air glimmer. Power passes between _here_ and _there_ , throwing her apartment into shadow and flame.

She knew who Sewlor would call. The chant alone would have told her, even if Yon hadn’t. Still she remains frozen over her tomatoes, heart hammering in her chest.

With his arrival the ritual reaches its peak. As a wave magic built and, like a wave, it reaches its apex and starts to recede. Jaesa can breathe again without dragging eddies of power through her lungs. Sometimes being so sensitive to the currents that hold their world together is more curse than blessing, especially since she’s no longer used to being around those who use them as easily as she uses a kitchen knife.

A human would have paid dearly for the Work Sewlor has undertaken. For him, for them, for the likes of them, all it costs is a touch upon their master’s will.

It does help that the one that was called was both willing and prepared to pay part of his way. Before he has made it, like a herald, the touch of his molten power precedes him and makes Jaesa’s fingers tremble in phantom cold.

Magic ebbs, the golden glow of the wards fades and Jaesa takes a steadying breath.

She knew who Sewlor would call. Even if she hadn’t, she would have known as soon as he crossed. She can feel him, clear as day, as he packs away the fire-cast strength of his aura into something that won’t sear her flat to cinders once he steps out of the circle.

Murmured conversation reaches her ears, a few words exchanged too low for her to make sense of.

Sewlor pads out of the guest room turned ritual chamber first. He wanders by on socked feet, yawning, and his mussed hair and the circles under his eyes give him the look of a freshman after an all-nighter. Jaesa glances after him but can’t quite bring herself to move. Frozen, she waits.

She is human enough now to feel the threat of what they have brought upon this world when it makes itself known. Slow, deliberate steps mark his approach and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.

He pauses an arm’s length behind her, his presence like a dragon’s breath. “Hello, little sister. Long time no see.”

Jaesa swallows and very deliberately lets go of the knife. He won’t hurt her. He’s just… powerful, the way dangerous things are, and he has always cared little to soften it the way Yon does. Slowly, Jaesa makes herself turn around.

He looks nothing like she remembers him, which makes sense. Reality bends his form to its laws and the glamor he chose does the rest. With it her brother looks like a teenager, with a mop of dirty blonde hair and a generic t-shirt that is twenty years out of date. He’s not even quite as tall as her and Jaesa has to swallow an unsteady laugh. “Hello, Alek.”

His eyes flash red. For a moment the name, too close to true so soon after his transition, breaks the delicate weaving of his disguise. Markings the color of simmering coal burn their way through it, in clean, branching lines. They fall from his eyes like tear tracks wrought from blood.

His horns are short and stubby, like a young bull’s, and as light-sucking black as his skin, his hair, everything about him that isn’t dipped in light by the lava glow of his marks, the cracks in the surface of his being that force you to look at what’s underneath. Jaesa blinks and Alek is a boy again, slouching, lanky and bored, with his hands shoved as far into the pockets of his worn jeans as they will go. Only his eyes, his eyes are too alert, too clear, a touch too red to be called brown.

His bangs can’t hide it, not if you know to look for it. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

‘ _Asks the spider of the fly_ ,’ Jaesa thinks to herself but the chuckle that bubbles up in her throat, the tears that stain it and escape her in ones and twos, they aren’t _fearful_. They could be, should be, she wishes they were.

His power is a volcanic eruption waiting to happen, ready to be set upon his enemies with abandon, and all Jaesa wants is to burrow into it and never come up for air. “I am.”

And it’s all true. Come what may.

* * *

“Alright. What have we got?” Theron staples his fingers in front of him blows out a breath. Across from him, Lana looks like she has bitten into a lemon. Between them, on their shared desk space, they’ve splayed out every bit of evidence that’s come in so far.

That’s… a lot. At the same time it’s a whole lot of nothing.

As he thinks that morosely, Lana pulls the latest report over. Going by the tag it’s from the crime scene techs. Color-coded reports. If his mom could see this, she would throw a party. She always did say what Theron’s life was missing was a spot organisation.

“Forced entry, through the window.” No shit but that’s their MO. If in doubt, start at the beginning and treat it like a new case.

“Took out the wards in the process.” Theron’s still feeling uneasy about that part. “But didn’t take them down. Have the spec techs gotten back to us?”

“Not yet.” Lana’s frustration is palpable. That would have been too much to ask for. Oh well. “So, magically talented. Possibly airborne.”

A bit of conjecture but it tracks. If the perp had climbed up, he would have had to blow out the ward on the ground floor, not upstairs. Theron props his cheek up on one hand. He drums his fingers on the desk in thought. “Witness reports said the demon that came through had wings.”

“Strong enough to fly with?” Lana sounds sceptical but he’s half sure she’s playing devil’s advocate. Ha. Literally. It’s not impossible that they weren’t, strong enough to fly with that is, at least in this world. Plane-shifting can fuck with you like that.

“Maybe.” No hard evidence either way, even if they can prove it was the demon that drained Rothschild beyond a shade of doubt. Theron tugs at a different stack of paper. The report he flips open is marked yellow, for cash. “No unusual activity on the victim. Bank statements checked out with White Collar and he didn’t shift anything last minute.”

His partner huffs, sits back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s a picture of dissatisfaction. “Potential enemies?”

“Probably about a hundred co-workers, over in the financial district.” That industry is cut-throat. Theron will take bloody murder over brokering stocks any day of the week. Brrr. “No one so far that would contract a hit, much less by a devil.”

Demons are many things, most of all _expensive_ and they rarely take credit cards. It takes a special sort of grievance to call one of them up, the kind that leaves blood on the walls. Or, you know. You have to be an idiot. That will do too. Case in point, their _other_ victim seems to be in the second category.

Theron is tempted to roll up the Whitmore case too but they’ve gone over him twice. This is their second round with Rothschild and it’s not more promising than the last one.

They need a new angle.

“What about the kid?” It’s completely out of the left field but… it has stuck with him. He can’t seem to get those photos out of his head. “Rothschild’s.”

Lana blinks, a touch of surprise crossing her face, but she is too much of a professional not to have covered all angles. Always prepared, that one. “His son? Not much to be found. Troublemaker turned run-away, you know the type.”

Yeah, he does. Theron was almost one of them, once upon a time. He’d rather not think about it. Maybe that’s what’s eating him. "Sounds like the kind of thing I might want my father whacked over."

And isn't that a great way to word it with his dad two offices down the hall. Lana snorts. "I'll put that down under 'maybe'."

“Anything else? Affairs, business deals gone wrong, suspicious amounts of money turning up out of nowhere?”

“No, no and no.” Lana snags a pencil from the table and taps it against one of the folders impatiently. “He had a break-through at work, about a month after his son ran off on him but his supervisor was _very_ chatty about how he was going places before that. That he turned into a workaholic around that time apparently helped.”

It would. “Didn’t want to go home.”

“Probably.” She’s a tough cookie but Theron can hear the sympathy in her voice, see it in the way she glances at their wall absently.

The wall. Their… teambuilding exercise. It hails back to a time where their partnership was so new it squeaked and constantly on the rocks. The counsellor had eventually bullied them into ‘sharing their accomplishments’ as she called it. For every case they solved, they’d put up something that reminded them of the good bits. Of what they had done, together.

It… it was good. Did a whole lot to get Theron to realize how far he was stuck in the downsides of their job, how he was clinging to the dark parts and failures. Unsolved cases. Murderers he, they, caught later than he would have liked. The constant, niggling thought that if he was better, if he was smarter, if he worked _harder_ he could have shut the case sooner.

He was one of the best detectives in the precinct, still is. He was also constantly riding the edge of a burnout. Not anymore.

Even after they got over their differences, they decided to keep the wall. Lana got it. She’s better at compartmentalizing, at keeping everything at a healthy distance but she… she gets it.

It’s gotten pretty crowded up there. That never fails to give Theron a reason to feel a little better, when he’s down.

They spend a few minutes in companionable silence, working up a bit of a buffer, or at least Theron is. This case is one of the stressful ones. He can already feel time nipping at his heels. Never gets any better, that.

He’s about to start sifting through their info again when there’s a knock on their doorjamb. Lana looks up and she’s smiling as soon as she sees their visitor, which clues Theron in just fine. It’s infective, makes him feel lighter, and that feeling only grows when he follows her line of sight. “Raan. Hey.”

He pretends he doesn’t hear Lana stifle a laugh at his tone. “Detective.”

Detective Raan, their co-worker from the next department over and Theron’s not so secret crush, looks… well, actually he kind of looks like shit. There are circles under his eyes dark enough to be painted on. The cup of coffee in his hand could sustain three people and he’s, like, half the size of a regular guy.

He’s fucking adorable and Theron will _die_ before he admits that to his face. Raan could break him in half. Not that he would, the softie.

“No uniform today?” There is a suspicious lack of it, in fact. Instead, the petite officer has bundled up in a sweater about two sizes too big for him and fluffy as hell. His auburn hair is a mess.

Raan smiles, rueful and warm but tired. “Full moon.”

Oh. Right. Crap. Theron is an asshole.

Raan is… lunar-phasically challenged. In plain English: He’s one of the incredibly lucky people who survived getting bitten by a were-creature. He doesn’t like to talk about it so that’s about all Theron knows for certain.

Every month, for about a week, Raan can’t get a wink of sleep at night and one of those he is literally climbing the walls of his apartment. Shoo-in for nightshift. Chances are he has been awake since yesterday. Ouch. “Sorry,“ Theron grimaces a little at his own slip, “I forgot. I can’t believe I keep forgetting.”

To his relief the admission makes Raan chuckle. “At least you’re not a bastard about it.”

The way Theron’s tongue ties itself into knots at the first damned sign of him rights itself. He sits up and maybe Lana would tease him about it if she didn’t do the same, a frown on her face Theron knows he’s mirroring to a T. “Is someone giving you trouble?”

It happens. Theron wishes it wouldn’t but it does. He remembers the asshole, what’s-his-face, Delocon? who kept bitching about his ‘allergies’ whenever Raan came around.

Yeah, that was fun. Not.

“It’s all good.” Raan waves his concern off, which doesn’t really make Theron feel better because he is _too nice_. He’s smiling though, which goes a ways. Still, Theron shares a glance with Lana and he’s sure he isn’t the only one to make a mental note to keep an eye out. “I hear you’ve caught a case half the department wishes they could stage an exorcism on.”

“Sounds about right.” They might _need_ an exorcism before this thing is over. Theron thinks back on Rothschild and has to suppress a shudder. Soul-theft is the _worst_. “It's a mess. We’ve been digging but so far…” Theron shakes his head, the grim certainty that they’re on the clock that Raan’s arrival chased away creeping back in. “No dice.”

While Raan makes a sympathetic sound that is a little too rough for a human throat but goes straight to Theron’s heart and makes it dance, Lana drags her fingers through her hair with a sigh. “Not enough leads to even know where to start. This is going to drive me crazy.”

She doesn’t do so well with cases she can’t pick apart to get at the truth. Theron can relate, even if his methods are different.

They share a moment of quiet commiseration. With their luck the next body will drop at nightfall. If they can’t scrounge up a lead until then…

Raan clicks his tongue. There’s something thoughtful on his face, something shrewd, that has Theron’s instincts sitting up in a spike of suspicion. “About that.”


	6. Chapter 6

Maybe Theron should back up a bit. Raan works for the next department over and the next department over, or ‘Downstairs’ as they all like to call it, is the task force for Interdimensional Crime.

The cases that drop over there tend to run higher stakes than Theron’s usual.

Trouble that lands in his lap is firmly centred on this side of the boundaries that separate their plane from others and generally a one-off. Raan’s bread and butter is trafficking, less than legal servitude clauses (read: contracted slavery) and smuggling of artefacts that really, really should not find their way into the black market of their world. Stuff that takes some heavy lifting and, if you’re unlucky, makes _money_. Raan comes up against people who not only habitually break the law for a living but also the laws of nature. Organized crime on steroids.

Now, Theron deals in all sorts of magical shenanigans from fraud to murder, or whatever else the warlock of the week has cooked up, but at least he rarely has to worry about some idiot slowly sawing at the Veil while they’re at it.

He should have figured someone from Downstairs would show up. They’ve got an illegal crossing on the books, of course dear old dad is going to call in the cavalry. Honestly, Theron can’t say he minds. They’ve got their fair share of good-natured inter-departmental rivalry going on but at the end of the day they’re all in the same boat, working for the same goal. If Raan can give them a hand he won’t complain.

And _no_ , Lana, it’s not because it gives him an excuse to hang out, _shut up_. She hasn’t said anything but her exasperated looks speak for themselves.

He clears his throat in a desperate bid to change the topic that hasn’t even technically been breached. “So, you got something for us?”

“Kind of.” Raan shrugs ruefully. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

That sounds… promising. Theron makes a token effort to get his organised chaos in check under Lana’s judgemental stare and then they’re off to… well. To the basement. There’s a reason Interdimensional Crime caught themselves the nickname they did. They’re the only department with labs underneath the ground floor, right next to the heart of the precinct wards, where they are strongest. It’s safer that way.

It’s also _fucking creepy_ , that’s what it is.

They reach the lower levels and Theron is shivering before the elevator doors even open. Once they do, the bright, cheery light flooding the hallway beyond looks like the first shot of a horror movie. The elevator music echoing in empty space like a show-tune doesn’t exactly help.

The hallway is so dim Theron can’t tell if there are any lights on at all.

Brrrr.

Raan doesn’t even pause. He wanders out into the gloom as if he does it every day. When he turns around to smile at them and wave them forward, his eyes reflect the light in lamp-lit brightness. Theron doesn’t shriek. He doesn’t.

No wonder Raan feels right at home here. Night-vision. Were-perks all the way.

… he needs a second to get over his heart-attack.

But Theron might not have been as subtle about swallowing his own tongue as he thought, seeing as Lana elbows him one too gently on her way out. Well, sue him. He- he forgot. How does he _keep forgetting_ , he makes his damned living seeing more than other people do!

“Theron?” Raan’s concern jars him out of his dithering. “You coming?”

“Yeah! Yeah, sorry.” Enough wool-gathering. They have a case to close.

They wander past a few closed doors before Raan stops at a decorated arch and touches the runes on the wall underneath. They light up under pressure in faint blue, and at the last one the wall parts, stone grinding on stone.

Downstairs gets all the cool toys. It’s really not fair.

The room beyond has a domed ceiling that should be too high to fit underneath the precinct. It’s a good thing Theron has stopped questioning shit like that ages ago. The whole, massive space is touched by the same darkness as the hall behind them, diffuse light too weak to truly break the pattern.

In the middle, right underneath the highest point of the dome, someone has installed a huge basin full of… Theron is going to assume that is water. It’s pitch black so he can’t tell either way but he’ll… he’ll go with that.

A few of Raan’s colleagues are milling around, swathed in robes more fit to a gathering of cultists. Raan nods to a few, waves to others, a little beam of sunshine as always. Gods, Theron’s got it bad.

He leads them to the edge of the basin, where a tall guy is waiting for them. No question who that is, robe or no. Theron would recognize Scourge with his eyes closed. Mostly because he is the biggest goddamned bastard he has ever met, in every sense of the word.

Raan’s partner seems transfixed by the still pool until his much, much smaller co-worker stops beside him. “You took your time,” is what he says for a greeting.

Where the cultured voice brings Theron’s hackles up immediately, Raan laughs. “We kind of did. Sorry.”

“It is no matter.” Scourge glances at him, eyes piercing yellow. As usual he hasn’t bothered with glamor. His red, leathery skin, the spikes growing in place of his eyebrows and the small tentacles that mimic a beard in a truly disturbing fashion, all come together to form a picture that is as close to human as can be while being entirely alien. “The pool has been attuned. We can begin.”

“Good.” Raan slides into business mode seamlessly. The lose way he carries himself grows more alert, not quite stiff but… ready. His eyes grow sharp. Yeah, when he is like this it is harder to miss what he carries inside of him. He looks back at them and Theron finds himself straightening instinctively. “We’ve analysed the residue of the ritual-site in the Temple.”

The name alone makes the air ring faintly, like a chime. The Temple, headquarters of the Order, might be a high-rise now, just like all buildings in the heart of their city, but it has a long history. The Order built it as an actual religious site, once upon a time, and it has managed to preserve the power it harboured. It’s one of the most intrinsically magical places in the country.

And now a devil has used it to make its way over into their world. How did it _do_ that? Everything his mother has ever told Theron about the Temple stressed that it was meant to guard against that kind of incursion, not just itself but the whole city. That might be a bit fanciful in this day and age but still. The _inside_ should have been safe.

Obviously it wasn’t. Somehow that disappoints a childhood belief Theron didn’t think he still held.

“Anything interesting?” Apart from the fact that the residue was _there_ , where it shouldn’t have been.

Raan nods, entirely serious. He dips his fingers into the basin and from his touch a ripple of small waves spreads across the perfect mirror of the surface. It grows stronger as it reaches out, sparkling faintly, and as it reaches the middle Theron finally understands why the light is so dim here.

A glowing rectangle rises from the pool, fire-bright and golden. It shines like a sun in the darkness.

Theron squints against the sudden light. There are… characters on it, or is that… it’s a picture.

The rectangle comes to a halt about five feet in the air, turning slowly and gaining definition. Framed by an intricate border that grows more detailed as Theron watches, the picture becomes clear.

It’s a flower, a lily, orange as the heart of a fire. Golden pollen dusts the air around it as it comes into full bloom. It’s beautiful.

Somehow, though, the sight of it makes dread well up in Theron’s heart.

Raan presses his mouth into a thin line, harsh on a face made for kindness. “We’ve confirmed the identity of your devil. It’s the Wrath.”

Eye-witness reports had told them that much but it’s good to have confirmation. Theron’s still not one hundred percent on why that’s so significant, apart from the name. Names are always a good place to start, when something has been summoned where it shouldn’t have been. “Alright. Run by me why that makes you look like we’re about to have our asses handed to us? He’s a demon lord, I guess?”

Beside him, Lana closes her eyes as if pained. “Theron, I swear to god.”

“What? That’s the gist, right? Demon-y big shot, major mojo, do not engage without backup, the whole nine-yards.” His partner reaches up to cover her face with her hand. Theron may or may not have been rooting for that reaction.

Raan looks torn between reprimanding them and amusement. There’s laughter lighting his eyes for a moment before he clears his throat sternly to get them back on track. One of these days. One of these days Theron is going to scrape his courage together and ask him out.

Today is not that day, especially not with Scourge giving him the stink eye. “You would do well to take this more seriously.”

Wow, he sounds even more constipated than usual. Theron can’t help but mutter, “What crawled up your ass and died?” under his breath.

The professional expression on Raan’s face twitches a little bit before he catches himself and gestures at the glowing lily. “The Wrath is a demon lord but that’s not all he is. He’s one of the seven sins.”

No way. No way in fucking h- well, hell. “You’re joking.” Theron tries to make it light but it comes out absolutely flat. “You’re pulling my leg, that’s not a thing.”

The look on Scourge’s face could have made paint peel. “It is indeed a ‘thing’, I assure you.” He steps closer to the basin too and, like Raan had, bends down to touch its surface. More pictures peel themselves from the obsidian liquid, one by one. Flowers, to the last, six more and each as beautiful as the next. Their shine paints the room in all colors of the rainbow.

Theron’s not that well versed in identifying plants but he thinks the red one might be a rose. He could be wrong though.

Scourge continues gravely, “The Seven are exceedingly dangerous and known to lead fools astray, as your myths detail all too well. The Wrath is the strongest among them, if not the most seductive. His title is passed from devil to devil, as power changes hands.” He pauses for a moment. When he continues, he sounds the quietest and, perhaps, the most uncomfortable Theron has ever heard him. “I used to hold it, before I came here and attained this post. I will admit that makes the matter somewhat personal to me.”

Before Theron can shove his foot in his mouth, because holy _shit_ , Lana clamps a companionable hand on his shoulder. She has a grip like a vice. A Vulcan nerve pinch would be a joke compared to this. He winces. Quietly.

Oblivious, Scourge forges on. “I regret to say that I know little of my successor. He is young, as far as devils go, and a peculiar character. I did not pay him much mind when I could have.”

“But you do know him,” dawns on Theron slowly as he sounds it out. “Or you know something _about_ him.”

“I do.” Finally Scourge turns away from the basin to give them his full attention. It comes to rest on Theron like a physical weight. “Raan?”

His partner nods seriously. With a wave of his hand the flowers disperse, all but the lily they started with. In their stead other pictures form, some bigger, some smaller, all embedded in what seems to be an intricate network that builds itself into uneven pyramids. They rise from the pool in throngs of multi-colored brilliance. The lily, the Wrath, remains one of the biggest constructs, hovering above the rest, but it is joined by others. It fits itself neatly into the larger of a set of circles seemingly disconnected from the structures below.

The rough outline of a woman in armor forms on the rectangle that comes to float right next to the flower, face distorted in rage and hands wound to claws. At the lower end of her picture, words form in beautifully drawn letters.

‘The Fury’ is what they say once they’re complete and Theron realizes in the same breath that among the golden tinged leaves of the lily the same winding script spells ‘The Wrath’ as he catches on what to what the pictures _are_.

Aw, fuck. Dad said something about arcana, didn’t he? Theron had kind of hoped he was being fanciful.

His father. Fanciful. Yeah, that’s gonna be the day.

One by one, card by card, a whole deck spells itself into thin air under Raan’s command and not the mundane kind. Theron can see it now that he knows what he looks for. Thirteen major face cards and thirteen lesser ones, set apart from the minors. Beneath them the suits, a whole baker’s dozen, from twos to kings and queens. Not all suits carry all numbers and most of them have only a singular ruler.

The Wrath is right up there at the very top, twirling lazily between Fury and Fortune. The second is represented by the stylized drawing of a court jester, one half of their masked face smiling while the other is crying.

That step into the twilight-zone from terran arcana sets the surreal theme for the rest of the deck, that represents the powers that govern the plane they belong to. There’s no Death, or the World. Instead, Calamity snaps its jaws next to a veiled Prince with a crown of stars. There are no staves, no cups or swords. The titles of the suits aren’t nearly so benign and also not immediately apparent until they inscribe themselves above their leaders. Raan snaps his fingers and most of them grow pale. Only the suit of Eternal Flame remains front and center.

Scourge glances over the intricate designs. “The current Wrath is a child of Fury and technically aligned with the suit of Eternal Flame, though he never belonged to it himself. He’s a rogue agent. That’s rare, in my kind. Nevertheless he enjoys a certain loyalty among his kin.” The faintest touch of disapproval tinges his words. Or is that… Theron frowns. On his temple his array comes alive, just a little. The artefact in front of them is near-blinding but with time growing a touch abstract and magic and emotion painted over the world with a delicate brush Scourge’s unease becomes even clearer.

He is… wary. Wary of even speaking about this guy. _Scourge_. Theron has seen him barrel headfirst into hostage situations the SWAT teams balked at.

“He has amassed a great amount of power although he specialises in… trinkets.” Scourge sneers, disapproval tipping into disgust though his wariness doesn’t fade. “I am not sure how and I don’t think anyone is but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he _has_ collected enough of it to be a force to be reckoned with. None of his challengers returned alive. His power is without question. I suspect this is the place we will find the motivation behind his current actions.”

Okay, back-up a moment. Time out. “You think that’s his motive? That he’s powerful? What, he wants to fuck with earth because he can?” That… makes as much sense as anything else Theron has speculated so far but, honestly, it’s usually more complicated than that. Then again, he has met enough fairies in his life to know some people just want to see the world burn, or dancing to their tune.

“I think he wants to _remain_ powerful. Any other driving force can be neglected, until he has achieved this goal.”

Theron waits a beat but Scourge seems to be done. His jaw is set, as if he is resisting the urge to grind his teeth. Raan gives his partner a sympathetic look, “It’s tough, getting the amount of magic a demon lord has through a summoning circle, as I'm sure you know. Bit like shoving an ocean through the eye of a needle.” He taps the edge of the pool and the surface ripples. So do the cards. They flicker for a moment before settling again. “This is as close to a real-time representation of the loci of power on Ard-Ha as we can call up. As you can see, most of the Wrath is still stuck over there. The Contractsman that summoned him… he pulled the cord when things went wrong, didn’t he?”

Beside Theron, Lana has grown still. He can almost _hear_ her brain flip through calculations. “He did. The gate was open for seconds, maybe minutes if the eyewitness reports are accurate.”

Eyes fixed upon the card of the Wrath, Scourge crosses his arms, slowly. “He would have needed hours, and assistance. More than he had. I am well aware of the complications involved in a crossing. It has diminished me and my magic has not recovered. It can’t, since it still exists, only elsewhere, in someone else’s keeping. I will never regain it. At an educated guess I would say my successor is determined not to suffer the same.”

And he would know. “The glyph, on Rothschild’s body.”

“A bid for strength and for help, as far as I could read from the fragments. There was more but-“

Scourge doesn’t get to finish. Mid-word the pool _flares_ in golden light. It’s so bright it drowns out the projection and everything else, from sight to sound. Theron slams his eyes shut and cancels his observational magic but he’s not fast enough. The beginnings of a migraine are setting in behind his eyes before his ears have stopped ringing.

Agitated shouting batters at him and sends spikes pain through his head.

“What the fuck-“

“Check the wards!”

“Someone pull the fire alarm-“

“Calm down everyone!”

Raan’s voice cuts through the din like a knife, the edge of command honed to a point. Silence falls.

After a few breaths, when he feels like he can open his eyes without _dying_ , Theron risks squinting at the basin.

It has gone dark again. The cards are back in place, spots of brilliance that make his head hurt and his eyes water. Something is wrong. Raan is bending over the edge, muttering diagnostic spells. The way his hands are clenching and unclenching on the rim is the only sign of his agitation.

“What just happened?”

“Someone summoned the seven of Flames.”

The suit they had been looking at is pulled forward, growing until the hole in the middle becomes undeniable. The card that sat between ‘eight’ and ‘six’ is gone.

Raan bites his lip. “Permanently. _Physically_. Look at that, there’s nothing left.”

Oh no. Dread pools in Theron’s stomach. “Someone, you said. Someone from _our_ world? Did they get called up _here_?”

He knows his answer before Raan has unglued his attention from the display, eyes wide and worried. “Yes.”


End file.
